UC-NBLF 


UNIVERSITY  OF  PENNSYLVANIA 


THE  POET  AS  PHILOSOPHER 


A  STUDY  OF  THREE  PHILOSOPHICAL  POEMS 
NOSCE  TEIPSUM   :  THE  ESSAY  ON  IVIAN   :  IN  MEMORIAM 


BY 

MABEL  DODGE  HOLMES 


A  THESIS 

PRESENTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF   THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  IN 

PARTL\L   FULFILMENT   OF    THE   REQUIREMENTS  FOR 

THE  DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 

1921 


<3V 


UNIVERSITY  OF  PENNSYLVANIA 


THE  POET  AS  PHILOSOPHER 


A  STUDY  OF  THREE  PHILOSOPHICAL  POEMS 
NOSCE  TEIPSUM   :  THE  ESSAY  ON  MAN   :  IN  MEMORIAM 


BY 

MABEL  DODGE  HOLMES 


A  THESIS 

PRESENTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF   THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  IN 

PARTIAL   FULFILMENT   OF    THE   REQUIREMENTS  FOR 

THE  DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


PHILADELPHIA.   PA. 
1921 


?fXCHA?^GE 


THE  POET  AS  PHILOSOPHER 

I 

One  of  the  passions  of  the  human  mind  is  the  passion  for  defini- 
tion. Were  it  not  so,  the  dictionary  maker  would  not  have  found 
60  large  and  so  constantly  growing  a  place  in  the  sun.  This,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  one  of  the  discoveries  of  maturity  is  the 
futility  of  the  effort  to  define.  Like  other  passions  mental  and 
emotional,  the  definition  is  elusive.  The  mental  concept,  so 
clear  while  merely  a  concept,  is  a  very  butterfly  in  its  power  to 
evade  the  grasp.  All  too  many  words  are  required  for  the  sufficient 
verbal  analysis  of  an  idea  that,  while  it  remains  merely  a  visualized 
image,  seems  self-evident.  The  perception  which  flashes  "upon 
the  inward  eye"  becomes  confused  and  dulled  when  the  feeble 
reason  attempts  justly  to  reproduce  it  through  the  halting  medium 
of  language.  Even  the  daily  homely  commonplaces  refuse  to  be 
"cribb'd,  cabined,  or  confined."  The  concrete  fabric  of  wood  or 
metal  dissolves  into  thin  air  before  our  effort  to  imprison  it  in 
words.  No  better  means  exists  of  proving  the  objects  of  every- 
day life  to  be  "such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of"  than  to  seek  to 
formulate  their  character  in  words.  Since,  then,  anything  made 
the  object  of  definition  becomes  nebulous  and  refuses  to  crystallize, 
why  not  snatch  at  something  recognizably  elusive,  and  ask,  "What 
is  a  poet?" 

What,  then,  is  a  poet?  The  answer  must  be  in  terms  of  what 
the  poet  makes  himself.  To-day  he  is  a  maker  of  pictures;  and 
the  charm  of  a  dawning  English  Mayday,  painted  in  vivid  primary 
colors,  lures  us  with  Arcite  out  into  woodland  paths  where  the 
hawthorn  breaks  into  blossom  and  the  "busye  larke"  soars  into 
the  blue.  To-morrow  he  is  a  singer  of  songs;  and  we  dance  with 
Ariel,  or  surfeit  on  the  food  of  love  to  Feste's  music ;  with  Hey  wood 
we  borrow  the  birds'  not«s  to  give  our  love  good-morrow,  or  with 
Greene  and  his  Sephestia  we  weep  for  the  coming  grief  of  the  child 
who  smiles  upon  her  knee.  To-day  he  is  the  stem  apostle  of  a 
religion  of  righteousness,  preaching  harsh  judgment  against  the 
"blind  mouths"  that  starve  "the  hungry  sheep";  to-morrow  he 
is  the  herald  of  the  gentler  creed  of  truth  in  beauty.  Now  he  is 
the  epicurean  cynic,  bidding  us  live  for  to-day  alone,  gathering 
rosebuds  while  we  may;   again  he  is  the  seer,  with  vision  of  that 

■i52J  98 


4  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

deathless  something  ''whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns." 
To-day  he  is  the  voice  of  revolt  against  things  as  they  are,  wailing 
"for  the  world's  wrong";  to-morrow  he  is  the  voice  of  an  unforced 
optimism,  singing  that  ''God's  in  His  heaven."  The  poet  is  all 
these,  and  more  than  these,  and  none  of  these.  Surely  a  definition 
which  so  refuses  to  be  held  within  bounds  leaves  room  for  a  poet 
who  is  a  philosopher. 

Of  philosophy  there  must  be  much,  underlying  and  implicit, 
in  all  poetry  as  in  all  life.  But  of  poets  who  have  felt  their  art  to 
be  a  medium  for  presenting  a  connected  and  well  formulated 
philosophical  system  there  have  been  few.  Three  such,  because 
of  a  common  element  in  their  theme  and  in  their  attitude  thereto, 
can  be  brought  into  collocation.  That  theme,  the  soul  of  man, 
its  nature  and  its  immortality,  is  the  problem  with  which  in  all 
ages  the  thinker  has  wrestled,  ever  failing  to  solve  it,  ever  return- 
ing, drawn  by  the  fascination  of  the  unsolvable.  From  Job  and 
Socrates  to  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  a  long 
road  leads,  marked  as  with  milestones  by  man's  attempts  to  find 
answers  to  the  age-old  questions,  "What  is  man?"  and  "If  a  man 
die,  shall  he  live  again?"  In  England  three  at  least  of  these  mile- 
stones are  the  poetical  philosophies,  or  philosophical  poems,  with 
which  this  discussion  is  concerned.  He  who  set  up  the  first  of 
these.  Sir  John  Davies,  too  little  known  as  the  creator  of  the 
earliest  philosophical  poem  in  modern  English  literature,  closed 
Elizabeth's  lyric  and  dramatic  century  with  "Nosce  Teipsum," 
a  work,  according  to  Nahum  Tate,  on  the  "origin,  nature,  and 
immortality  of  the  soul."  A  century  and  a  half  later,  Alexander 
Pope  turned  his  gift  of  rhetoric  and  epigram  to  the  task  of  versi- 
fying Bolingbroke's  philosophy  in  "An  Essay  on  Man."  Again 
a  century  passed,  and  all  the  divers  tones  of  Tennyson's  clear 
harp  were  tuned  to  the  theme  of  the  deathlessness  of  man,  in  the 
most  loved  of  English  elegies,  "In  Memoriam." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  these  poets  philosophized,  or  that  in 
each  of  the  works  named  a  system  of  philosophy  is  presented. 
Does  that  make  the  poet  a  philosopher?  The  great  leaders  of 
metaphysical  thought  have  been  those  who  have  built  upon  a 
structure  already  begun,  a  new  elevation;  or  who  have  themselves 
laid  the  foundation  for  other  men  to  build  upon;  or  who,  as 
pioneers,  have  blazed  the  trail  into  an  unbroken  wilderness  of 
abstract  reasoning.      Bacon,   Spinoza,   Kant,    Hegel — these  are 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  5 

creators.  The  poet,  too,  is  a  "maker";  but  is  his  creative  power 
adapted  to  the  realm  of  metaphysical  originality?  Can  a  poet 
be  an  original  philosopher? 

An  answer  may  be  arrived  at  by  an  investigation  of  the  work 
of  the  poets  who  have  turned  their  art  to  the  use  of  metaphysics. 
From  the  measure  of  their  success  may  be  established  a  conclusion 
as  to  whether  the  poet  can  be  as  fittingly  a  leader  in  abstract 
thought  as  he  is  a  maker  of  pictures,  a  teller  of  tales,  a  singer  of 
songs,  a  voicer  of  emotions;  or  whether  his  philosophy  is  notable, 
not  for  its  depth  or  originality,  but  for  the  grace  and  vividness  of 
the  image  which  the  polished  mirror  of  his  mind  reflects  for  us  of 
the  current  thought  of  his  time. 


II 

Were  the  poet  not  made  of  impressionable  material  he  would  be 
no  poet.  His  appeal  lies  in  his  universality,  in  his  voicing  of  the 
thoughts  and  emotions  of  all  times  and  all  classes.  Were  he  not 
so  sensitively  keyed  to  the  moods  of  men,  to  the  temper  of  his 
time,  to  life  around  him,  he  would  express  in  his  verse  only  a 
personal  and  therefore  a  limited  and  subjective  feeling  or  idea. 
It  is  the  poet's  power  to  focus  within  himself  impressions  from 
without,  transmitting  them  through  the  lens  of  his  own  mind, 
that  gives  his  work  a  claim  on  the  world's  attention.  His  theme, 
therefore,  however  old  and  however  often  treated,  will  show  in  his 
handling  of  it  the  influence  not  only  of  personal  mood  and  tempera- 
ment, but  also  of  personal  circumstances  and  environment,  and  of 
the  spirit  of  the  age  for  which  he  is  a  spokesman. 

In  a  first  casual  reading  of  ''Nosce  Teipsum,"  ''An  Essay  on 
Man,"  and  "In  Memoriam,"  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  writer's 
attitude  to  his  subject  was  in  each  case  colored  by  the  exciting 
cause  of  the  poem.  Without  falling  into  the  fallacy  that  the 
artist's  work  always,  and,  to  a  large  degree,  only  reflects  the 
artist's  life,  we  may  yet  grant  that  in  the  case  of  the  reflective, 
the  philosophic,  or  the  emotional  writer  more  than  in  that  of  the 
imaginative  one,  life  and  its  circumstances  disclose  the  springs  of 
art.  Could  we  trace  the  events  of  Shakespeare's  life  in  the  careers 
of  Orlando,  Troilus,  and  Hamlet,  then  "the  less  Shakespeare  he"; 
but  Goldsmith  is  not  the  less  Goldsmith  nor  Burns  the  less  Burns 
because  the  "Deserted  Village"  and  "Sweet  Afton"  are  auto- 
biographical. As  for  the  three  poems  under  consideration,  they 
are  all  more  easily  understood  and  more  fully  appreciated  in  the 
light  of  the  circumstances  of  their  origin. 

In  "Nosce  Teipsum"  is  recorded  the  result  of  a  piece  of  youthful 
extravagance  on  the  part  of  the  lately  fledged  barrister,  not  yet 
full  grown  into  the  grave  statesman  and  lawyer  so  honored  of 
King  James  the  First. ^  During  his  years  of  law  study,  John 
Davies  had  counted  as  his  "deerest  friend,"  quoting  the  dedication 
of  his  poem  "Orchestra,"^  one  Richard  Martin,  elsewhere  char- 

^  Complete  Poems  of  Sir  John  Davies,  ed.  by  Dr.  A.  B.  Grosart,  1876,  Vol.  I, 
p.  xxxiv. 
*  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  159. 

6 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  7 

acterized  as  "fast  of  tongue  and  ribald  of  wit."^  The  intimacy 
suffered  the  fate  that  often  attends  extravagant  youthful  friend- 
ships. For  reasons  never  known  to  the  public,  Davies  took  grave 
offense  at  Martin,  and  the  quarrel  which  ensued  not  only  changed 
the  course  of  the  poet's  life,  but  was  indirectly  responsible  for  his 
greatest  poem.  The  dramatic  scene  when  Davies,  cudgel  in 
hand,  entered  the  dining  hall  of  the  barristers  in  the  Middle 
Temple,  sought  out  Martin  sitting  at  table,  and  beat  him  soundly 
over  the  head,  displays  a  most  unjudicial  and  unphilosophic 
fieriness  of  spirit,  and  was  not  unreasonably  followed  by  the 
expulsion  of  Davies  from  the  Temple  and  his  dismissal  from  the 
bar.  Humiliated,  he  retired  to  Oxford.-  The  year  which  followed 
seems  to  have  been  a  turning-point  in  the  young  man's  ;  life  for 
disgrace  drove  him  to  reflection,  and  unhappiness  to  introspection. 
We  have  his  own  word  for  it: 

'*  If  ought  can  teach  us  ought.  Affliction's  lookes, 
(Making  us  looke  into  ourselves  so  neere,) 
Teach  us  to  know  ourselves  beyond  all  bookes, 
Or  all  the  learned  Schooles  that  ever  were. 

"  This  mistresse  lately  pluckt  me  by  the  eare, 
And  many  a  golden  lesson  hath  me  taught; 
Hath  made  my  Senses  quicke,  and  Reason  cleare, 
Reform'd  my  Will  and  rectifide  my  Thought. "= 

At  the  end  of  a  year,  the  golden  lessons  were  embodied  in  "Nosce 
Teipsum,"  the  earliest  purely  philosophical  poem  in  English 
literature. 

It  is  obvious  that  a  poem,  the  theme  of  which  is  the  nature  of 
the  soul  as  revealed  to  the  writer  by  the  hard  mistress  Experience, 
with  a  view  to  guidance  in  his  future  conduct  of  life,  must  voice  a 
subjective  interpretation.  It  treats  of  the  nature  of  the  soul  as 
Davies  has  found  it  out  in  experience,  in  observation,  in  reflection; 
particularly  it  is  his  own  soul  that  is  analyzed,  for  most  of  all  he 
has  learned  to  "know  himself."  The  poem  is  a  revelation  of  self, 
for  the  sake  of  those  who  by  reading  may  arrive  at  a  similar  self- 
knowledge.  Davies  does  not  stand  apart  from  his  concept,  man, 
and  survey  him  with  a  detached  and  scientific  scrutiny.  He  is  a 
part  of  his  own  concept,  and  his  treatment  of  the  theme  is  cor- 
respondingly warm,  intimate,  and  human.     There  is  in  "Nosce 

» Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  xxii.  ^  Ilrid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  xxiii.  » Ilnd.,  Vol.  I,  p.  23. 


8  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Teipsum"  no  egotistically  elaborate  or  self-conscious  intention 
to  produce  a  philosophy.  It  is  a  philosophy,  to  be  sure,  but  a 
philosophy  that  overflows  in  childlike  naivety  from  within  the 
unhappy  heart  of  its  writer.  It  is  hard  to  avoid  the  feeling  that 
Davies  wrote  the  poem  to  comfort  himself  in  his  humiUation  by 
an  act  of  self-expression;  as  if  to  him,  as  to  Wordsworth,  "A 
timely  utterance  gave  that  thought  relief." 

Equally  obvious  is  it  that  a  poem  the  philosophy  of  which  is 
essentially  one  of  conduct  must  be  primarily  interested  in  the  soul 
as  it  lives  on  earth,  where  conduct  is  its  outer  garment.  More- 
over, it  is  not  the  soul  of  man  in  general  that  is  so  analyzed,  but  a 
single  soul,  real,  animate,  individual.  Davies'  conclusions  were 
as  empirical,  as  full  of  common  sense,  as  thoroughly  based  on  his 
own  observations  of  the  things  that  his  own  soul  could  and  did  do, 
as  were  Locke's,  a  century  later.  The  problems  of  metaphysics 
are  everywhere  subordinated  to  the  problems  of  conduct,  and 
however  far  afield  theoretical  speculation  may  lead  the  writer, 
he  always  returns  in  time  for  his  application  of  the  theory  to 
practice.  For  instance,  in  a  carefully  reasoned  passage  on  free 
will,  the  strongest  argument  for  freedom  is  that  without  it  man 
could  not  do  the  things  right  standards  of  conduct  demand  of 
him — 

"  If  love  be  compeld  and  cannot  chuse. 
How  can  it  gratefuU  or  thankeworthy  prove? 

"Love  must  free-hearted  be,  and  voluntary. "» 

And  a  thorough  analysis  of  the  power,  worth  and  beauty  of  the 
soul  leads  to  the  conclusion 

"that  God  did  meane 
This  worthy  mind  should  worthy  things  imbrace; 
Blot  not  her  beauties  with  thy  thoughts  unclean, 
Nor  her  dishonour  with  thy  passions  base."'^ 

Of  such  a  practical  and  didactic  nature  was  necessarily  the  meta- 
physics taught  as  "golden  lessons"  in  the  school  of  experience  by 
the  mistress  Affliction,  with  a  view  to  reforming  and  rectifying 
the  will  and  thought  of  the  learner. 

Quite  different  was  the  exciting  cause  of  Pope's  "Essay  on 
Man."     Here  is  no  "spontaneous  overflow  of  powerful  emotions" 

1  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  59.  » Ihid.,  Vol.  1,  p.  115. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  9 

or  even  of  tranquil  reflection  induced  by  regret  for  an  act  of  folly. 
The  poem  grew,  not  out  of  Pope's  life  experience,  but  out  of 
Bolingbroke's,  and  its  initiation  was  due  to  the  friendship  between 
the  statesman  and  the  poet.  Far  from  being  "pluckt  by  the 
eare"  by  affliction,  Pope  was  only  too  ready  to  give  audience  to 
the  specious  optimism  which  his  St.  John  was  so  willing  to  impart. 
The  source  of  the  "Essay"  is  to  be  sought,  then,  rather  in  Boling- 
broke's story  than  in  Pope's,  except  in  so  far  as  Pope's  lack  of 
philosophical  knowledge,  coupled  with  his  worship  for  his  noble 
patron,  made  him  open  to  suggestion  from  the  master  of  Dawley. 

The  outstanding  features  of  the  first  period  of  Bolingbroke's 
brilliant  and  unscrupulous  career^  need  here  be  only  indicated 
rather  than  rehearsed — his  rise  to  power  under  Anne;  his  fall  and 
exile  at  the  accession  of  George  I ;  his  retirement  into  philosophical 
leisure  in  rural  France;  his  declared  intention,  more  than  a  little 
successful,  to  make  himself  the  arbiter  of  European  thought  if 
he  could  not  be  of  European  politics;  his  return  to  Dawley  and  his 
subsequent  gathering  around  him  of  the  most  illustrious  wits  and 
literary  men  of  his  time,  while  he  pursued  his  double  career,  of 
philosopher  at  his  country  seat,  of  factious  intriguer  in  London. 
The  man  of  whom  Chesterfield  wrote  that  he  joined  "the  most 
elegant  politeness  and  good-breeding  that  ever  any  courtier  and 
man  of  the  world  was  graced  with"  to  the  "deepest  erudition, "^ 
was  easily  able,  by  his  grace  and  dignity  of  manner,  by  the  charm 
of  his  conversation,  and  by  his  generous  sympathy  with  men  of 
genius,'  to  command  the  admiration  of  the  "sickly,  solitary,"* 
sensitive  poet  of  Twickenham,  whose  passion  for  literature  and 
literary  men  made  him  quickly  susceptible  to  the  condescension 
of  the  host  of  Voltaire,  Swift,  and  Arbuthnot,  and  the  patron  of 
Gay.6 

Bolingbroke's  ambitious  philosophical  aim  was  no  less  than  to 
demolish  the  existing  systems  of  theological  and  philosophical 
dogma,  and  to  reconstruct  a  new  metaphysics  along  his  own 
original  lines,  presenting  an  organic  and  harmonious  view  of  the 

^  See  Bolingbroke:  A  Historical  Study,  by  John  Churton  Collins. 

'  Chesterfield's  Letters,  ed.  by  Lord  Mahon,  1847,  Vol.  I,  p.  355. 

'  Collins'  Bolingbroke,  pp.  8-9. 

*  Alexander  Pope,  by  Leslie  Stephen,  p.  2. 

» Collins'  Bolinghroke,  pp.  186-188. 


10  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

universe.^  But  a  merely  academic  hearing,  by  scholars  and 
churchmen,  did  not  offer  to  his  propaganda  suflScient  range.  A 
popular  audience  was  his  goal.  At  his  hand  he  found  a  poet 
whose  already  established  reputation  would  secure  the  popular 
audience.  A  philosophy  however  abstruse,  if  presented  in  Pope's 
admired  couplets,  would  command  the  attention  of  the  reading 
world.  Together  Bolingbroke  and  Pope  sketched  the  plan  for 
a  great  didactic  poem,  of  which  the  cantos  contained  in  our 
"Essay"  were  to  be  but  a  fraction.^ 

That  portion  of  Bolingbroke's  works  which  embodies  this 
phase  of  his  philosophy  was  couched  in  the  form  of  "Letters  to 
Mr.  Pope."  But  these  were  not  written  until  after  the  "Essay."' 
According  to  Doctor  Warton,  however.  Lord  Bathurst  saw  the 
whole  scheme  of  Pope's  poem  drawn  up  in  Bolingbroke's  hand- 
writing, consisting  of  "a  series  of  propositions,  which  the  poet  was 

^Ibid.,  pp.  217-221. 

*  Collins  says:  "  It  was  he  who  sketched  the  plan  of  that  magnificent  work, 
of  which  the  'Essay  on  Man,'  the  'Moral  Essays,'  and  the  fourth  book  of  the 
'Dunciad'  are  only  fragments — a  work  which  would  in  all  probability,  had 
the  health  and  energy  of  Pope  been  equal  to  the  task,  have  been  the  finest 
didactic  poem  in  the  world."     P.  189. 

Stephen  quotes  Bolingbroke  as  saying  to  Swift  in  1731,  "Does  Pope  talk 
to  you  of  the  noble  work  which,  at  my  instigation,  he  has  begun?"     P.  160. 

Bolingbroke  writes  to  Pope  in  letter  introductory  to  Essays  on  Human 
Knowledge:  "Since  you  have  begun,  at  my  request,  the  work  which  I  have 
wished  long  that  you  would  undertake,  it  is  but  reasonable  that  I  submit  to 
the  task  you  impose  upon  me."  Works  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  Bohn's  edition, 
1844,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  40. 

'  Stephen's  Pope,  p.  165. 

Bolingbroke's  letter  to  Pope,  cited  above,  says:  "You  have  begun  your 
ethic  epistles  in  a  masterly  manner.  .  .  .  While  your  muse  is  employed 
...  I  shall  throw  upon  paper,  for  your  satisfaction  and  my  own,  some 
part  at  least  of  what  I  have  thought  and  said  formerly."  Works,  Vol.  Ill, 
pp.  40-43. 

The  Advertisement  to  the  Fragments  or  Minutes  of  Essays  says:  "The 
foregoing  essays  and  the  Fragments  or  Minutes  that  follow,  were  thrown  upon 
paper  in  Mr.  Pope's  lifetime  and  at  his  desire.  They  were  all  communicated 
to  him  in  scraps,  as  they  were  occasionally  written.  .  .  .  They  are  all  noth- 
ing more  than  repetitions  of  conversations  often  interrupted,  often  renewed, 
and  often  carried  on  a  httle  confusedly."     Works,  Vol.  IV,  p.  111. 

These  quotations  make  it  evident  that  Pope's  versification  of  Bolingbroke's 
philosophy  was  written  before  the  formal  arrangement  of  the  prose  essays. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  11 

to  amplify,  versify,  and  illustrate."'  Poet  and  philosopher  joined 
to  construct  a  system  of  ethics  which  they  determined  should 
"descend  to  posterity  clothed  in  more  attractive  form  than  those 
to  be  dug  from  ponderous  folios.  The  sentiments,  the  design, 
the  philosophy  were  to  be  Bolingbroke's;  the  poetry,  the  ornament, 
and  the  fame  Pope's."* 

The  "Essay  on  Man,"  then,  represents  a  deliberate,  conscious 
attempt  to  express  in  poetry  the  systematic  analysis  of  the  soul 
in  its  relation  to  life  which  is  a  part  of  Bolingbroke's  philosophical 
system.  Art  is  not  here  the  medium  through  which  the  poet 
interprets  the  soul  as  life  has  revealed  it  to  him;  the  poet  himself 
is  rather  the  tool  of  a  propagandist.  The  motive  is  not,  "Woe 
be  unto  me  if  I  utter  not  the  thought  that  burns  my  lips";  but 
rather,  "Go  to,  now,  let  us  build  us  a  philosophical  system  that 
will  reach  unto  heaven,  and  let  us  make  of  it  a  poem  that  shall 
command  the  popular  ear."  The  impulse  is  wholty  didactic,  and 
the  poetic  form  in  which  the  teaching  is  couched  has  an  artificiality 
not  wholly  due  to  the  literary  fashion  of  the  time. 

"Nosce  Teipsum,"  to  be  sure,  is  no  less  didactic;  but  its  spon- 
taneous voicing  of  something  valuable  that  the  poet  has  found  out 
and  wants  to  pass  on  to  others  makes  it  real  and  sincere.  Using 
one's  art  to  interpret  the  truth  of  the  soul  as  one  has  found  it  in 
experience  is  very  different  from  entering  into  a  literary  partner- 
ship wherein  a  philosopher  is  to  win  audience  for  his  system  by 
means  of  a  poet's  pen,  and  a  poet  is  to  win  fame  by  using  an 
immortal  theme  as  mere  ready-made  material  for  his  art.  The 
treatment  of  any  subject  under  such  circumstances  must  neces- 
sarily be  abstract,  coldly  logical,  and  to  a  great  extent  objective. 
For  the  ideas  are  not  evolved  from  Pope's  consciousness;  the 
garment  which  he  cuts  is  from  another  man's  cloth,  and  his 
interest  is  in  shape  rather  than  substance.  He  does  not  care 
greatly  about  the  nature  of  the  soul;  his  enthusiasm  is  for  the 
cut  and  polished  epigrams  from  whose  facets  are  to  glitter  the 
truths  he  has  been  told  about  the  soul. 

With  the  sources  of  inspiration  of  both  Pope  and  Davies  thus 
before  us,  it  is  not  hard  to  trace  the  spiritual  kinship  of  our  third 
poet.     If  "Nosce  Teipsum"  bears  witness  to  the  sweetness  of  the 

'  Memoirs  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  Vol.  II,  p.  100,  footnote. 

Collins'  Bolingbroke,  p.  190. 

'  Memoirs  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  pp.  100-101. 


12  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

uses  of  adversity,  even  more  does  "In  Memoriam"  stand  as 
monument  to  the  triumph  of  the  "faith  that  looks  through  death." 
Da  vies  wrote  from  the  Valley  of  Humiliation;  Tennyson,  from 
the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death.  And  proportionate  to  the 
greater  depth  from  which  the  cry  came  was  the  height  to  which 
the  soul  attained 

"Upon  the  world's  great  altar  stairs 
That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God." 

The  story  of  the  grief  of  Alfred  Tennyson  for  his  friend  Arthur 
Henry  Hallam  is  too  familiar  to  need  re-telling.  Less  trite, 
perhaps,  is  an  allusion  to  the  testimony  of  their  contemporaries 
as  to  the  beauty  and  power  of  the  character  of  the  subject  of  the 
"Elegies,"  as  the  separate  poems  were  at  first  called.  The  man 
whose  father  could  speak  of  his  "almost  faultless  disposition"; 
whom  Lord  Houghton  called  "a  most  wise  and  influential  coun- 
sellor," and  Henry  Alford  a 

"gentle  soul 
That  ever  moved  among  us  in  a  veil 
Of  heavenly  lustre"; 

and  of  whom  Gladstone  wrote,  long  after,  that  had  he  lived  he 
"would  have  built  his  own  enduring  monument,"^  was  surely 
worthy  of  the  seventeen-year-long  poetic  tribute  that  embodies 
the  still  dearer  gift  of  unforgetting  friendship. 

The  very  length  of  time  over  which  the  composition  of  "In 
Memoriam"  extends  is  proof  of  the  sincerity  of  its  spirit.  That 
it  was  begun  immediately  after  Hallam's  death  is  attested  by  a 
group  of  manuscript  lines  containing  its  germ  and  bearing  date 
of  the  winter  of  1833.2 

"  Where  is  the  voice  I  loved?    Ah  where 
Is  the  dear  hand  that  I  would  press? 
Lo!  the  broad  heavens  cold  and  bare, 
The  stars  that  know  not  my  distress! 

The  vapor  labors  up  the  sky. 

Uncertain  forms  are  darkly  moved! 

Larger  than  human  passes  by 

The  shadow  of  the  man  I  loved, 

And  clasps  his  hands,  as  one  that  prays!" 

»  Wace's  Tennyson,  pp.  30-34.  ^  Memoir,  Vol.  I,  p.  107. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  13 

Moreover,  in  the  manuscript  book  containing  the  earliest  draft 
of  "The  Two  Voices,"  pubUshed  in  1833,  appear  five  of  the  poems 
later  to  be  a  part  of  "In  Memoriam."^  The  date  of  pubhcation, 
1850,  would  not  alone  be  proof  of  the  long  process  of  development 
of  the  whole  poem;  but  identification  has  been  made  of  events 
and  persons  alluded  to  that  did  not  enter  the  poet's  life  until 
dates  as  late  as  1845.^  The  last  step  in  the  progress  of  the  work 
was  the  arrangement  of  the  parts  in  the  order  in  which  thej' 
stand.  Of  the  gradual  evolution  of  the  poem  Tennyson  himself 
wrote,  "The  sections  were  written  at  many  different  places,  and 
as  the  phases  of  our  intercourse  came  to  my  memory  and  suggested 
them.  I  did  not  write  them  with  any  view  of  weaving  them  into 
a  whole,  or  for  publication,  until  I  found  that  I  had  written  so 
many." 

It  is  easy  and  superficial  to  say  that  the  poem  originated  as 
an  outlet  for  personal  grief.  Undoubtedly  personal  grief  inspired 
inquiry  into  the  great  subjects  of  God,  faith,  and  immortality,  as 
likely  to  afford  comfort.'  Equally  surely  the  poem  is  subjective 
in  its  initiation.  Sorrow  awakened  the  consciousness  of  the  need 
to  know  by  personal  investigation  what  are  the  grounds  for  belief 
in  the  great  tenets  of  faith.  Tennyson,  when  Hallam  died,  was 
at  the  doubting  age;  his  struggle  with  the  doubts  common  to 
youth  was  merely  precipitated  by  the  loss  of  his  friend.  And 
because  "In  Memoriam"  voices  doubts  that  are  common,  it 
became,  as  its  maker  said  of  it,  "a  poem,  not  an  actual  biography." 
It  partakes  of  a  dramatic  quality,  by  which,  wrote  Tennyson, 

1  Memoir,  p.  109.    The  poems  are  the  following: 
Fair  ship,  that  from  the  ItaUan  shore,     ix. 
With  trembling  fingers  did  we  weave,     xxx. 
When  Lazarus  left  his  chamel-cave.     xxxi. 
This  truth  comes  home  with  bier  and  pall.     Ixxxv. 
It  draweth  near  the  birth  of  Christ,     xxviii. 
*  A.  C.  Bradley,  in  A  Commentary  on  Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam,'"  pp. 
15-17,  mentions  Charles  Tennyson's  marriage  tour  in    1836  (xcviii) ;  allu- 
sion  in  Ixxxv  to   Edmund   Lushington,  whom  Tennyson   did   not  become 
a  friend  of  until  1840,  and  whose  marriage  to  Cecilia  Tennyson  in  1842  is 
celebrated  in  the  Epilogue;    removal  of  the  Tennysons  from  Somersby  to 
Epping  Forest  in  1837   (c-cv);   visits  to  Barmouth,  1839,  and  Gloucester- 
shire, 1844,  where  certain  poems  were  said  by  Tennyson  to  have  been  written. 
Lushington  wrote  in  1845,   "Tennyson  showed  me  those  poems  of  'In 
Memoriam'  which  were  finished,"  implying  that  more  were  to  come. 
'  E.  H.  Sneath,  The  Mind  of  Tennyson,  pp.  9-10. 


14  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

"the  different  moods  of  sorrow  as  in  a  drama  are  dramatically 
given.  .  .  .  'V  is  not  always  the  author  speaking  of  himself,  but 
the  voice  of  the  human  race  speaking  through  him."* 

In  another  way  than  as  an  elegy  "In  Memoriam"  was  inspired 
by  Arthur  Henry  Hallam.  Much  of  the  spirit  of  his  few  writings 
is  apparent  in  Tennyson's  philosophy.  Hallam  was  much  more  a 
philosopher  than  was  Tennyson  in  his  youth,  and  in  their  walks 
at  Cambridge,  in  their  joumeyings  in  Europe,  in  their  vacation 
days  at  Somersby,  the  friends  must  have  talked  much  of  the  great 
topics  that  lie  at  the  heart  of  all  philosophy.  It  is  not  hard  to 
detect  a  possible  source  of  inspiration  in  the  lines  found  by  Hallam 
Tennyson  among  his  father's  treasured  letters  from  Arthur.^ 

"I  do  but  mock  me  with  the  questionings. 
Dark,  dark,  irrecoverably  dark 
Is  the  soul's  eye;  yet  how  it  strives  and  battles 
Through  the  impenetrable  gloom  to  fix 
That  master  light,  the  secret  truth  of  things, 
Which  is  the  body  of  the  Infinite  God." 

Not  only  out  of  Hallam 's  death,  then,  but  equally  out  of  Hallam 's 
life  sprang  the  "wild  and  wandering  cries"  which  grew  through 
the  years  into  an  unexampled  expression  of  the  passion  and  the 
pain  of  the  heart  that  "feels  after  God  if  haply  we  may  find  Him"; 
to  discover  at  last  triumphantly  that  "He  is  not  far  from  evervone 
of  us." 

If  the  circumstances  in  which  the  three  poems  originated  are 
responsible  for  their  quality,  not  less  so  are  the  temperaments  and 
personalities  of  their  writers.  Sir  John  Davies  was  a  lawyer,  and 
from  all  we  can  learn  of  him  an  eminently  practical  person,  whose 
legal  acumen  no  less  than  his  poetical  achievement  commended 
him  to  the  shrewd  King  James  the  First.  Nor  was  he  without 
the  social  graces  of  a  courtier,  while  at  the  same  time  displajdng 
the  typically  sturdy  English  temper  of  the  parliamentarian  who 
stood  for  right  against  privilege,  even  when  privilege  was  a  royal 
monopoly.^  His  practical  achievement  found  its  best  expression 
in  his  earnest,  intelhgent,  and  untiring  efforts  for  the  right  govern- 
ment of  the  ever  troublesome  Ireland.'*      His  mind  was  legal,  his 

1  Memoir,  Vol.  I,  p.  305. 

'  Memoir,  Vol.  I,  p.  104. 

'  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  p.  xxxiii. 

*  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  pp.  xxxv-lxiv. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  15 

temper  judicial,  his  habit  of  life  active.  In  "Nosce  Teipsum" 
the  legal  mind  seeks  to  prove  its  belief;  the  judicial  temper 
provides  motive  for  such  effort  to  prove,  in  the  ethical  application 
which  is  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  poem;  and  the  active  practicaHty 
of  the  busy  man  of  affairs  presents  the  abstractions  of  metaphysics 
in  the  plain  blunt  language  and  with  the  simple  faith  characteristic 
of  the  writer's  manly,  straightforward  attitude  to  life.  It  is  a 
practical  working  philosophy  that  Davies  embodies  in  his  poem. 
And  yet  it  is  philosophy  as  such,  not  implicit  in  allegory  or  drama, 
lyric  or  heroic  narrative,  according  to  the  fashions  of  his  time. 
Davies  was  a  thinker  and  a  worker,  not  a  singer;  life  to  him  was  a 
problem  of  conduct,  not  the  material  of  a  stage-play. 

No  less  is  the  character  of  the  "Essay"  determined  by  the 
character  of  Alexander  Pope,  an  exponent  in  his  own  person  of  the 
cynical  temper  of  his  day.  Embittered  by  the  ill-health  and 
deformity  which  cut  him  off  from  the  active  life  of  men,  and  by  the 
Catholic  disabilities  which  barred  him  from  a  political  career; 
little  inclined  to  mingle  in  a  wide  and  tolerant  friendliness  with 
men  outside  the  circle  of  his  chosen  friends;  prone,  when  irritated, 
to  jealousy,  suspicion,  and  petty  quarreling;  catering  to  popular 
wits  and  aristocratic  Tory  leaders,  and  priding  himself  on  his 
position  as  ''authorized  interpreter  of  the  upper  circle";  having 
the  gift  neither  of  sympathetic  and  kindly  laughter  nor  of  the  tears 
that  spring  "from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair" — thus 
poorly  equipped  for  poesy,  Pope  can  hardly  be  expected  to  handle 
with  adequate  sympathy  or  with  spontaneity  the  great  theme 
through  the  variations  of  which  throbs  the  heartbeat  of  human 
longing.  Problems  of  conduct  were  secondary  to  a  man  whose 
guide  was  expediency  and  whose  pastime  was  intrigue.  The  great 
truths  of  religion  brought  no  thrill  to  a  man  to  whom  his  own 
religion  had  been  only  a  limitation  of  opportunity  and  all  other 
religion  but  a  hostile  environment.  Pope's  interest  in  God  and 
immortality  is  primarily  neither  ethical  nor  theological,  but 
speculative.  An  intricate  and  unimpassioned  chain  of  logic, 
illuminated  by  Pope's  rhetorical  gift  of  brilliant  epigram,  leads 
to  rationalistic  and  purely  abstract  conclusions,  as  cold  as  they 
are  clever. 

To  Davies  the  practical  and  Pope  the  rationalistic  succeeds 
Tennyson  the  introspective.  His  passion  is  neither  conduct  nor 
speculation,  but  faith,  the  intuitive  faith  of  the  mystic.     As  truly 


16  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

religious  and  moral  as  Davies,  with  the  conventional  religion  and 
morality  of  the  nineteenth  century,  he  yet  lives,  unlike  Davies,  a 
life  far  removed  from  public  affairs.  As  aristocratic  and  conserva- 
tive as  Pope,  he  yet  possesses,  unlike  him,  a  pulsing  human 
sympathy  and  a  love  and  knowledge  of  nature  which  are  his 
heritage  from  the  poets  of  the  Revolution,  Side  by  side  with  his 
gift  of  self-analj^sis  is  his  capacity  for  experiencing  to  the  full 
every  human  emotion — love,  joy,  grief,  friendship,  hope,  despair. 
Where  Davies  based  his  treatment  of  the  problems  of  the  soul  of 
man  on  the  foundation,  "I  have  inquired  and  learned  to  know"; 
where  Pope  proceeds  from  the  starting-point,  "I  have  reasoned 
and  reached  a  conclusion";  Tennyson's  heart  "Stands  up  and 
answers,  'I  have  felt,'"  and  to  his  expression  of  feeling  finds 
continuing  echo  in  numberless  other  hearts. 

In  spite  of  their  single  theme,  then,  our  three  poems  are  likely 
to  be  widely  divergent  in  character — the  first,  an  earnest,  unaffect- 
ed expression  of  a  soul  enthusiastic,  sturdy,  sincere,  seeking  to 
impart  to  others  salutary  lessons  learned  by  him  in  a  hard  school; 
the  second,  a  studied,  brilliant  piece  of  artifice,  issuing  from  a 
nature  shallow,  cold,  vain,  whose  effort  to  convince  men  of  eternal 
truths  grew  not  of  heart  but  of  brain;  the  third,  a  record  of 
struggle  from  darkness  to  light  of  a  sensitive,  introspective, 
intuitively  religious  soul,  voicing  with  pulsing  sympathy  an 
experience  common  to  every  such  soul  and  therefore  universal  in 
its  appeal. 

And  the  divergence  to  be  expected  in  view  of  these  differences 
of  circumstance  and  temperament  is  likely  to  appear  still  more 
inevitable  when  studied  in  the  light  of  the  times  from  which  the 
poems  emanated.  Can  our  poet  be  an  original  philosopher? 
In  so  far  as  he  reflects  his  time,  he  is  but  a  mirror,  not  a  creator. 
Before  he  can  be  estunated  as  either,  he  must  be  seen  against  a 
background  Elizabethan,  Georgian,  Victorian. 


Ill 

Of  the  Elizabethan  age/  with  its  overflowing,  superabundant 
vitaHty,  the  keynote  is  surely  "More  life  and  fuller."  Not  a 
century  had  passed  since  intellect,  religion  and  national  conscious- 
ness had  had  their  new  birth  under  the  touch  of  Erasmus  and  More, 
Grocyn  and  Colet,  Henry  VII  and  Wolsey.  From  a  negligible 
island,  torn  by  civil  strife  and  backward  in  civilization,  England 
had  been  made  by  her  great  minister  the  arbiter  of  Europe;  the 
often  ridiculed  economies  of  her  first  Tudor  king  had  added  to  her 
international  prestige  the  backing  of  a  well-filled  treasury ;  stirred 
to  emulation  by  Italian  and  Portuguese  example,  British  voyagers 
had  made  their  first  timid  attempts  to  try  their  "woven  wings" 
upon  the  dread  Atlantic;  and  all  within  less  than  a  hundred  years 
of  the  accession  of  Elizabeth.  The  spirit  of  the  Italian  Renaissance 
came  late  into  England,  having  undergone  transformation  at  the 
hands  of  the  austere  and  ethical  genius  of  northern  Europe  into 
a  spirit  whose  dominant  note  was  moral  and  religious.^  English 
scholars  caught  from  Italy  the  zeal  for  classic  philosophy  and 
literature,  the  fascinated  pursuit  of  ancient  learning,  the  revolt 
against  authority  and  the  sense  of  the  value  of  the  individual, 
which  in  Italy  had  been  accompanied  by  a  purely  pagan  delight 
in  beauty  for  its  own  sake.  In  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  of 
Henry  VII  and  VIII  there  was  no  paganism;  the  methods  of 
classic  study  were  applied  with  keenest  zest  to  sacred  writings, 
and  among  the  treasures  of  antiquity  it  was  the  graver  Hterature 
that  commanded  attention  from  the  master  minds  of  the  time. 
The  reviving  intellect  was  the  handmaid  of  religion;  religious 
instruction  and  moral  training  were  the  ultimate  goals  of  the 
study  and  teaching  of  the  classics;  and  serious  Hterature,  not 
secular,  supplied  the  material  in  shaping  which  the  intellect  was 
to  achieve  its  mastery  of  the  new  tools  of  culture.     The  period  of 

'  For  facts  implied  in  the  historical  and  Hterary  summary  see  the  following: 
A.  D.  Innes,  England  Under  the  Tudors. 

E.  P.  Cheyney,  England  from  the  Defeat  of  the  Artnada  to  the  Death  of 
.    Elizabeth . 

F.  A.  Pollard,  Political  History  of  England  from  Accession  of  Edward  VI 
to  Death  of  Elizabeth. 

Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature,  Vols.  3  and  4. 
'Adams'  Civilization  During  the  Middle  Ages,  Ch.  xv. 

17 


18  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

the  humanists  in  England  was  a  learning  period,  gravely  intent, 
as  a  child  upon  a  new  lesson,  upon  its  task  of  making  practical 
and  accessible  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients. 

Before  the  opening  of  the  Elizabethan  period  the  intellect  has 
found  itself.  The  first  ventures  into  new  realms  of  thought  and 
knowledge  are  complete.  Knowing  that  it  has  wings,  the  spirit 
of  Elizabethan  England  is  ready  for  far  flights.  It  is  the  age  of 
youth,  enthusiastic,  exuberant,  out-reaching,  eager  to  try  its 
newly  realized  intellectual  strength  as  well  in  realms  of  art  as  in 
those  of  graver  learning.  So  art  seeks  new  channels,  by  experiment 
in  the  use  of  every  medium — lyric,  dramatic,  fictional,  metrical, 
linguistic.  Travelled  courtiers  come  home  from  France  and 
Italy  bringing  new  art  forms,  and  England  bursts  into  song. 
To  find  new  modes  of  expression  poets  and  pedants  juggle  with 
classic  metres  and  euphuists  strain  rhetoric  to  the  breaking  point. 
Vogue  follows  vogue  in  kaleidoscopic  succession  of  miscellany, 
allegory,  pastoral,  and  sonnet.  Religion  refuses  to  be  bound  by 
the  shackles  of  authority,  either  Roman  or  Anglican;  and,  as  the 
method  of  the  humanists  applied  to  sacred  documents  produces 
the  English  Bible,  the  Puritan  spirit  comes  to  birth,  itself  a  great 
adventure.  National  pride  grows  with  Elizabeth's  greatness, 
reflected  in  chronicle,  historical  play,  and  poetical  history,  where 
Camden  and  Harrison  vie  with  Shakespeare  and  Daniel  in  celebrat- 
ing the  glories  of  England.  Across  the  western  ocean  the  first 
of  the  empire  builders  sail  out  to  meet  the  Spanish  galleons  home- 
coming under  silken  sails  and  laden  with  the  treasures  of  the 
Indies.  The  flag  of  England  follows  the  little  ships  of  the  merchant 
adventurers  into  the  Orient.  In  the  pages  of  Hakluyt  magic 
casements  are  opened  upon  the  foam  of  perilous  seas.  A  new 
world  lures  to  its  exploration  both  poet  and  mariner.  To  seek, 
to  strive,  to  fare  forth  upon  the  great  adventure,  whether  armed 
with  pen  or  with  sword,  is  the  temper  of  the  time. 

Youth  unspoiled  is  unsophisticated.  The  age  of  Elizabeth 
was  an  unsophisticated  age.  Its  judgments  were  based  on  its 
own  often  mistaken,  but  always  sincere  sense  of  values.  Its 
thinkers,  with  intellects  newly  set  free  from  the  trammels  of 
ecclesiastical  and  scholastic  methods,  turned  from  the  study  of 
the  classics  to  the  study  of  life.  They  were  for  the  most  part 
unconscious  philosophers,  whose  conscious  interest  was  all  in 
men  and  their  affairs.      Little  abstract  metaphysics  emanates 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  19 

from  the  age  of  Elizabeth.  But  a  deep  and  simple  understanding 
of  Hfe  and  its  problems  is  implicit  in  their  writings;  and  is  not 
that,  after  all,  a  working  philosophy ?'  Life  was  their  study; 
all  life,  all  manifestations  of  life,  seemed  to  them  new,  vivid, 
full  of  wonder,  a  great  adventure,  luring  to  exploration  as  the  far 
lands  lured.  A  twentieth  century  which  inherits  the  constructive 
thought  of  three  hundred  years  can  be  startled  into  attention 
only  by  a  radical  innovation.  But  the  thinkers  of  an  age  which 
inherited  only  crystallized  tradition,  and  which  had  discarded 
that  tradition  as  an  outworn  garment,  found  that  the  body  of 
truth  within  the  garment,  hitherto  by  them  unseen  and  unreahzed, 
had  all  the  beauty  of  Venus  to  Praxiteles.  They  looked  at  the 
mere  externals  of  this  body  of  thought;  they  knew  as  little  of  the 
intricate  possibilities  of  its  inner  recesses  as  contemporary  physi- 
cists knew  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood.  The  simpler  acts  of  life 
and  of  the  universe,  which  a  more  complex  age  takes  for  granted, 
offered  to  them  inexhaustible  material  for  analysis.  Simple 
emotions,  rudimentary  mental  and  spiritual  processes,  basic 
philosophical  truths,  are  dissected  with  the  garrulity,  not  of  age, 
but  of  youth  discovering  something  new.  However  much  Plato 
or  Zeno  or  Plotinus  may  have  discovered  it  before,  to  the  Ehzabeth- 
ans  each  fresh  explanation  of  the  meaning  of  life  is  naively  a  new 
discovery.  It  is  a  discovery  which  will  out;  it  must  find  articulate 
expression.  Thus  the  passion  of  love  provides  stuff  for  poetic 
meanderings  through  sonnet  sequence  after  sonnet  sequence,  all 
voicing  feelings  which  to  our  worldly  wise  generation  are  trite 
enough  to  be  left  implicit  in  something  subtler,  but  which  to 
them  were  full  of  the  charm  of  things  never  before  expressed. 
However  often  Greek  or  Latin  or  Italian  poets  might  have  said 
these  things.  Englishmen  had  not  said  them  before.  Nothing 
was  too  trivial,  too  obvious,  to  be  put  into  words. 

As  unsophisticated  of  spirit  as  his  age,  young  John  Davies 
took  as  his  theme  the  explanation  and  proof  of  these  great  self- 
evident  fundamentals,  God,  man,  and  immortality,  which  the 

'  Touchstone:   Hast  any  philosophy  in  thee,  shepherd? 

Carin:  No  more  but  that  I  know  the  more  one  sickens  the  worse  at  ease  he 
is;  and  that  he  that  wants  money,  means,  and  content  is  without  three  good 
friends;  that  the  property  of  rain  is  to  wet,  and  fire  to  burn  .  .  . 

Touchstone:  Such  a  one  is  a  natural  philosopher. 

—.4s  You  Like  It.     Act  III,  Sc.  2,  11.  21-33. 


20  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

professional  metaphysicians,  ancient  and  modern,  from  Plato 
to  Calvin,  had  already  analyzed  and  formulated.  The  young 
adventurer  into  philosophy  had  nothing  really  new  or  profound 
to  add  to  the  body  of  their  thought,  but  to  himself  his  discoveries 
of  truth  were  as  new  as  if  made  for  the  first  time.  Since  he  had 
not  known  these  things  before,  he  took  for  granted  they  were 
equally  new  to  others. 

It  is  probable,  too,  that  to  his  contemporaries  the  philosophical 
discoveries  of  Davies  had  all  the  charm  of  novelty.  It  is  to  our 
print-satiated  age  that  they  seem  trite.  The  men  and  women 
who  read  his  work  knew  Plato  and  Aristotle,  to  be  sure;  but  here 
were  Plato  and  Aristotle  popularized  and  made  English.  And 
these  readers  were  not  constructive  thinkers,  each  in  possession 
of  a  well-formulated  system  of  metaphysics.  Among  the  men  of 
learning  of  his  time,  Davies  was  one  of  the  few  conscious  philos- 
ophers. While  he  was  no  more  really  the  philosopher  than  was 
Spenser,  and  while  his  work  no  more  truly  contains  a  knowledge 
of  the  deep  things  of  the  thought  of  the  ages  past  than  does  the 
"Faerie  Queen,"  nevertheless  Spenser's  philosophical  reflections 
are  so  intermingled  with  the  thread  of  his  allegory  and  with  vivid 
images  of  sensuous  beauty  that  the  philosopher  seems  all  poet. 
For  the  writer  of  "Nosce  Teipsum,"  on  the  contrary,  poetry  was 
merely  the  medium  of  expression  of  an  abstract  philosophical 
theme — the  ship  which  carried  the  adventurer  through  the  deeps 
of  thought,  into  a  country  to  him  as  undiscovered  as  was  the 
Eldorado  which  lured  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  to  his  death. 

With  the  query,  "Why  did  my  parents  send  me  to  the 
Schooles?"^  Davies  begins  an  introduction  that  laments  the 
vanity  of  human  knowledge.  He  reminds  the  reader  that  "the 
desire  to  know  first  made  men  fools,"  and  goes  on  to  describe  the 
"fond  fruitlesse  curiositie"  with  which  "in  bookes  prophane  we 
seeke  for  knowledge  hid."    The  seeking  is  to  no  purpose: 

"when  all  our  lamps  are  burned, 
Our  bodies  wasted,  and  our  spirits  spent ; 
When  we  have  all  the  learned  Volumes  turned, 
Which  yeeld  mens  wits  both  help  and  ornament: 

What  can  we  know?  or  what  can  we  disceme?"* 

'  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  Vol.  I,  pp.  15-17. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  18. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  21 

The  idea  is  not  new;  to  search  no  further,  it  is  at  least  as  old  as 
Koheleth.  Davies,  however,  as  the  gentle  cynic  did  not,  finds  a 
reason  for  this  purposelessness  which  at  the  same  time  affords  a 
hope  for  an  ultimate  knowledge  that  shall  be  of  some  avail : 

"For  how  may  we  to  others'  things  attaine, 

When  none  of  us  his  owne  soule  understands? 

"We  that  acquaint  ourselves  with  every  Zoane 
And  passe  both  Tropikes  and  behold  the  Poles, 
When  we  come  home,  are  to  ourselves  unknown, 
And  unacquainted  still  with  our  owne  Soules."^ 

If,  then,  the  seeker  after  knowledge  will  but  study  his  own 
soul  first,  he  may  hope  to  arrive  at  true  wisdom.  Had  it  not  been 
for  the  poet's  misfortunes,  he  tells  us,  he  would  have  been  as  blind 
as  others,  having  a  mind  wholly  occupied  with 

"the  face  of  outward  things, 
Pleasing  and  fau'e,  agreeable  and  sweet."* 

But  catastrophe  has  driven  the  young  man  back  upon  himself: 

"My  selfe  am  center  of  my  circling  thought, 
Onely  my  selfe  I  studie,  learne,  and  know."' 

With  this  preliminary  statement  of  his  theme  and  his  reasons 
for  choosing  it,  Davies  proceeds  to  a  detailed  definition  of  the  soul 
in  terms  both  positive  and  negative.  The  theories  of  various 
"great  clerks"  are  catalogued  and  dismissed  with  the  verdict  that 

"No  craz'd  braine  could  ever  yet  propound. 

Touching  the  Soule,  so  vaine  and  fond  a  thought, 

But  some  among  these  masters  have  been  found, 

Which  in  their  Schooles  the  self-same  thing  have  taught."* 

Reaching  the  conclusion  that  the  soul  is  "a  spirit,  and  heavenly 
influence,"*  the  poem  continues  to  give  proof  from  nature  and 
theology  that  this  spirit  was  created  by  God,  in  contradiction  to 
other  theories  of  its  origin.^  The  explanation  of  the  relation  of 
the  soul  to  the  body,  by  means  of  physical  senses  and  mental 
faculties,  ends  the  first  part  of  the  poem.'  The  second  part  is 
devoted  to  a  careful  proof  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  with  a 
refutation  of  current  objections  to  the  doctrine.^ 

1  Ibid.,  p.  19.  *  lUd.,  p.  27.  '  Ihid.,  pp.  60-82. 

'  lUd.,  p.  22.  » Ibid.,  p.  41.  « lUd.,  pp.  82-116. 

5  JUd.,  p.  24.  « lUd.,  pp.  45-60. 


22  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Neither  are  these  new  ideas;  they  are  as  old  as  Socrates  or 
as  Job.  But  to  Da  vies  they  are  new;  and  he  approaches  them 
with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  that  explorer  into  new  realms  who  is 
the  best  type  of  the  Elizabethan  Englishman.  He  has  no  more 
hesitation  in  attacking  an  insoluble  problem  than  has  Gilbert  in 
attempting  a  Northwest  Passage  or  Drake  in  singeing  the  beard 
of  the  Spanish  king.  His  daring  spirit  is  undaunted;  he  will 
answer  the  question  for  which  the  centuries  have  found  no  adequate 
reply.  He  will  define  the  indefinable;  " unknowables "  are  left 
to  the  nineteenth  century.  Poets  of  his  time  have  already  blazed 
the  trail  of  the  love  song,  of  the  historical  narrative,  of  the  pastoral 
lyric,  of  the  sonnet  sequence;  Davies  will  blaze  the  trail  of  the 
philosophical  elegy.  The  twentieth  century,  far  on  the  road  to  an 
understanding  of  all  mysteries  and  all  knowledge,  may  look  with 
amused  wonder  at  the  length  of  the  argument  which  Davies  thinks 
is  necessary'  to  prove  that  the  soul  can  exist  without  the  body, 
or  that  the  soul  has  no  need  of  food.  Such  propositions  as  he 
spends  ingenuity  and  poetic  power  upon  are  of  a  sort  to  be  either 
assumed  or  discarded,  but  no  longer  debated.  In  a  time  when 
every  public  school  child  may  know  if  he  will  the  uses  of  the  five 
senses,  a  careful  analj^sis  of  the  subject  by  an  adult  for  adults 
seems  superfluous.  Yet  to  feel  a  sence  of  redundancy  or  undue 
multiplication  of  words  in  Davies  is  to  argue  a  lack  of  his- 
torical imagination;  for  in  the  naive  simplicity  which  expresses 
what  a  more  complex  age  would  take  for  granted,  the  poet  is  only 
the  exponent  of  the  youthful  outspokenness  of  his  time.  These 
things  were  to  him  worth  talking  about,  worth  writing  his  best 
verses  about.  Moreover,  they  were  things  about  which  the 
poetry  reading  public  of  his  time  thought  and  talked,  and  as  to 
which  Davies  wished  to  persuade  them  to  right  views.  They 
elicited  from  him  many  a  brilliant  stanza,  many  a  fresh  and 
vital  interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  life.  That  they  did  so 
merely  shows  him  the  child  of  his  period,  when  to  think  was  to 
put  into  words. 

Davies'  problem  was  the  problem  of  Job;  it  is  the  problem  of 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge;  it  is  ageless  because  unanswerable.  But  his 
approach  to  the  problem,  compact  of  philosophical  conmionplaces 
though  it  may  be,  voices  ideas  that  to  his  contemporaries  were 
worth  voicing,  because  to  their  simple,  youthful  enthusiasm 
3verything  was  interesting,  nothing  trite.     After  all,  with  all  the 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  23 

sophistication  of  the  moderns,  it  is  hard  to  find  a  deeper,  surer, 
more  penetrating  summing  up  of  the  whole  nature  of  man  than 
this: 

"I  know  I  am  one  of  Nature's  Uttle  kings. 
Yet  to  the  least  and  vilest  things  am  thrall — "*■ 

To  gain  wisdom  has  been  to  lose  wonder;  the  twentieth  century 
psychologist  has  reduced  to  a  science  the  mental  and  spiritual 
processes,  soul-stuff  having  become  to  him  merely  material  for 
experiment,  a  substance  as  self-evident  as  oxygen  to  the  chemist. 
It  was  the  sixteenth  century  guesser  at  truth  who  cried  out  in 
reverent  ardor, 

"O  ignorant  poor  man!  what  dost  thou  beare 
Lockt  up  within  the  casket  of  thy  brest? 
What  jewels,  and  what  riches  hast  thou  there!"* 

But  between  our  over-scientific  age  and  the  young  enthusiasm 
of  Sir  John  Davies  and  his  contemporaries  lie  three  centuries 
whose  history  is  that  of  the  swinging  pendulum.^  The  splendid 
figures  of  Elizabeth's  court  passed  into  silence;  the  great  queen 
herself  laid  down  her  regal  power;  heroic  adventure  gave  place 
to  the  petty  intrigue  of  a  Stuart  court.  Instead  of  the  reverent 
wonder  that  took  shape  in  lofty  poetry  appeared  fanatic  super- 
stition whose  emotional  outlet  was  witch-hunting.  The  consum- 
mate feminine  tact  was  gone  which,  capitalizing  the  native  English 
chivalry  that  made  men  loyal  to  a  whimsical  and  arbitrary  Glori- 
ana,  had  held  a  liberty-loving  nation  in  happy  subjection  under  an 
autocratic  paternalism.  In  its  stead  reigned  a  shrewd,  stubborn, 
antagonistic  self-will,  king  by  divine  right,  according  to  the 
fashion  of  continental  monarchs.  Administration  by  favorites, 
coupled  with  the  failure  of  the  royal  pedant  to  comprehend  the 
laws  and  Hberties  of  England,  goaded  the  free-born  Englishman 
into  resentment  and  revolt.     Enthusiasm  found  a  new  outlet; 

1  Ibid.,  p.  24. 

» Ibid.,  p.  114-115. 

»  For  facts  underlying  the  ensuing  historical  summary,  see  the  following: 

Trevelyan — England  under  the  Stuarts. 

Hassall — Balance  of  Power  in  Europe. 

Wakeman — Seventeenth  Century  Europe. 

Lecky — History  of  England  in  the  18th  Century. 

Robertson — England  under  the  Hanoverians. 

Innes — History  of  Englaiid  and  the  British  Empire,  Vol.  3. 


24  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

not  Eldorado,  not  Virginia,  not  the  treasures  of  the  Indies  lured 
the  adventurous  spirit,  but  an  ideal  of  freedom  from  tyranny,  of 
government  by  the  consent  of  the  governed.  Play  and  poem 
gave  place  to  political  pamphlet;  art  became  the  handmaid  of 
an  austere  religion,  or  fled  in  fear  from  the  noisy  confusion  of  a 
nation  in  civil  strife.  Great  literature  is  not  born  of  civil  war,  nor 
great  art  of  religious  bigotry. 

On  the  pendulum  swung  through  the  descending  arc  of  regicide. 
Protectorate,  and  Restoration,  to  reach  its  lowest  curve  in  the 
decadence  of  the  Meriy  Monarch's  reign.  Of  the  corruption  of 
the  public  taste,  permeated  by  the  contagion  of  a  corrupt  court, 
no  further  evidence  is  needed  than  the  total  absence  of  ethical 
ideals  in  the  Restoration  drama.  The  reaction  against  Puritanism 
was  displayed  in  two  forms:  the  frivolous  mind,  resenting  the 
trammels  that  had  been  placed  upon  conduct  by  the  rigid  morality 
of  Presbyterians  and  Covenanters,  burst  all  bounds  in  an  orgy  of 
dissipated  pleasure;  the  thoughtful  mind,  flinging  off  the  shackles 
of  creed  with  which  a  Calvinistic  establislmient  had  loaded  it, 
either  became  indifferent  to  all  religion,  or  inclined  with  cold 
curiosity  to  the  rationalistic  movement  which  was  beginning  to 
dominate  thought  under  the  influence  of  Hobbes  and  Descartes. 
In  parliamentary  circles  reaction  was  the  rule  of  the  day,  embodied 
in  Poor  Laws,  a  Penal  Code,  and  acts  of  reUgious  intolerance 
which  made  the  great  Toiy  families  supreme  in  state  and  church, 
and  created  an  insurmountable  cleavage  between  the  upper 
class,  Torj'^  and  Anglican,  and  the  middle  and  lower  classes, 
democratic  and  Dissenting. 

National  prestige,  so  high  under  Elizabeth,  had  fallen  to  the 
lowest  figure  perhaps  ever  reached  by  English  stock — a  figure 
indexed  by  the  subsidy  paid  to  Charles  II  by  the  king  of  France, 
and  by  the  signatures  of  the  Cabal  to  a  sham  treaty  by  which  an 
ally  was  sold  out.  English  military  power  was  negligible,  her 
strength  sapped  by  the  civil  wars  of  two  decades,  and  by  the 
emigration  of  her  sturdiest  and  most  independent  spirits  to  the 
free  air  of  the  New  World.  Men  had  changed  "swords  for  ledgers," 
and  forsaken  "the  student's  bower  for  gold";  for  one  tremendously 
vital  force  in  English  life  in  the  seventeenth  century  was  the 
developing  commercial  life  of  the  nation.  Colonies  were  encour- 
aged as  a  source  of  new  markets;  navigation  acts  were  made  law 
as  a  means  of  controlling  and  monopolizing  those  markets;    the 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  25 

soon-to-be  great  aristocracy  of  trade  was  in  its  infancy.  In  these 
facts  lay  the  germs  of  eighteenth  century  material  prosperity; 
yet  prosperity  bought  at  the  price  of  a  commercialized  national 
life  is  bought  too  dear,  and  the  period  when  the  commercializing 
process  takes  place  may  be  not  unfairly  called  a  nation's  lowest 
watermark. 

Still  the  pendulum  swung,  now  through  an  ascending  arc 
whose  degrees  are  marked  by  the  birth  of  the  Whig  party,  the 
Glorious  Revolution,  the  Bill  of  Rights,  and  the  conquests  of 
England's  first  foreign  wars  of  commerce.  The  colonial  empire 
expands;  growing  commercial  and  sea  power  means  growing 
prosperity,  growing  smugness,  growing  national  self-satisfaction. 
England  becomes  to  Europe  the  pattern  of  the  constitutional 
monarchy,  with  a  government  really  representative  and  a  ministry 
really  responsible.  Dating  from  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht,  eighteenth 
century  England  represents  the  extreme  opposite  from  the  England 
of  Elizabeth.  A  nation  which  has  suffered  from  its  unchecked 
enthusiasms — for  freedom,  in  the  stress  of  the  Civil  War;  for 
religion,  in  Puritan  bigotry;  for  pleasure,  in  the  demoralized 
court  of  Charles  II — turns  with  relief  to  a  life  bereft  of  enthusiasm. 
No  more  do  the  "woven  wings"  of  the  Uttle  ships  of  England  flit 
down  the  Channel  on  their  way  to  wrest  from  the  Spaniard  the 
wealth  of  the  Indies;  rather  her  merchantmen  ply  the  African 
slave  trade  in  the  infamous  service  of  the  Spanish  crown.  Bribery 
and  place-hunting  are  the  passions  of  an  England  made  prosperous 
and  peaceful  by  Walpole's  statecraft.  Formalism  and  artificiality 
are  the  natural  outgrowth  of  revulsion  against  great  genuineness 
of  feeling,  great  sincerity  of  action.  At  all  costs,  whatever  may 
be  beneath  the  surface,  let  a  seemliness  of  outward  appearance 
be  maintained.  And  since  there  are  no  great  issues  to  be  faced, 
with  traditional  insularity  separating  England  from  vital  interest 
in  European  wars,  with  religious  tolerance  breeding  religious 
indifference,  with  the  love  of  system,  of  order,  of  a  universe 
reduced  to  form  and  law  becoming  the  sole  meditation  of  the 
thoughtful — since  there  are  no  great  issues  there  can  be  no  great 
enthusiasms,  and  men's  minds  are  left  free  for  attention  to  the 
small,  surface  non-essentials. 

Thus  the  eighteenth  century  is  as  truly  an  age  of  artificiality 
as  was  the  sixteenth  an  age  of  enthusiasm.  Preservation  of  the 
balance  of  power  is  the  keynote  of  international  relations,  as 


26  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

preservation  of  the  balance  between  classes  is  the  goal  of  domestic 
statecraft.  So  dehcately  adjusted  a  system,  man-made  and 
man-upheld,  whose  treaties,  as  Alberoni  said  of  Utrecht,  "pared 
and  cut  countries  like  Dutch  cheeses,"  without  regard  for  racial 
affinities  or  natural  boundaries,  must  needs  be  both  artificial  and 
mechanical.  The  wars  of  the  eighteenth  century  are  not  wars  for 
principle,  not  wars  of  national  pride,  not  wars  for  glory  or  for 
right;  they  are  wars  for  boundary  lines  and  for  the  right  allotment 
of  colonial  possessions,  so  that  no  nation  may  have  too  much 
power.  It  is  a  time  sordid,  treacherous,  unworthy,  without 
touch  of  high  adventure  or  of  idealism.  It  is  a  time  of  unscrupu- 
lous invasions  of  Silesia,  of  ruthless  partitionings  of  Poland,  of 
secret  treaties  germinating  the  seeds  of  future  wars. 

England,  insular  and  isolated,  pushes  about  her  colonial  pawns 
and  knights  upon  the  international  chessboard;  but  her  domestic 
life  goes  on  apart  from  continental  strifes.  Apart,  that  is,  except 
as  the  artificial  spirit  of  the  age  finds  outlet  in  an  artificial  social 
system,  and  except  as  her  colonial  conquests  increase  her  command 
of  world  markets  and  consequent  commercial  prestige.  Prosperity 
at  home,  on  which  the  character  of  eighteenth  century  English 
life  is  based,  grows  out  of  conquest  abroad.  Under  the  nurture 
of  the  Mercantilist  policy,  a  constant  outward  flow  of  English 
manufactures  keeps  a  golden  stream  flowing  inward  far  in  excess 
of  the  cost  of  imported  raw  materials.  Accessories  of  life  which 
had  in  Elizabeth's  day  been  the  luxuries  of  the  upper  classes 
became  the  necessities  of  humbler  folk.  Artisan  of  the  town  and 
country  squire  desire  to  be  comfortable  as  well  as  free  and  inde- 
pendent. The  material  conditions  of  life  for  the  middle  and  lower 
classes  improve;  the  upper  classes  increase,  including  in  their 
charmed  circle  the  newly  born  aristocracy  of  trade.  The  leisurely 
and  luxurious  life  of  the  country  estate  is  no  longer  the  perquisite 
of  the  nobility.  New  types  of  amusement  develop,  of  a  sort  to 
occupy  the  erstwhile  bourgeois  ladies  and  gentlemen  whose 
center  of  social  activity  is  the  country  house.  Infinite  leisure 
means  infinite  opportunity  for  elegant  conversation  at  polite 
tea-drinkings  among  people  of  fashion.  As  formal  as  the  "stiff, 
brocaded  gown  "  of  the  eighteenth  century  lady,  as  artificial  as  the 
"patterned  garden  paths"  of  the  primly  laid  out  shrubberies  and 
lawns  where  she  walked,  as  superficial  as  the  Chesterfieldian 
gallantry   which   cloaked   an   actual   contempt   for    women — so 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  27 

insincere  and  shallow  was  the  conversation  which  skimmed  the 
surface  of  the  deep  reahties  of  Hfe,  mistaking  itself  for  the  language 
of  true  culture,  while  in  fact  its  briUiancy  was  the  veneer  of 
elegance  and  taste  rather  than  the  substance  of  thought  and 
knowledge. 

It  is  an  age  of  political  adventurers  and  reUgious  sceptics;  an 
age  when  men  of  letters  write  in  bondage  to  the  wealth  of  their 
patrons;  an  age  when  statecraft  busies  itself  with  intrigue  and 
delicate  finesse,  uninspired  by  sweeping  motives  of  patriotism  or 
reform;  an  age  without  a  grand  passion.  It  is  an  age  to  produce 
a  Frederick  of  Prussia,  a  Voltaire,  a  Swift,  rather  than  a  Gustavus 
Adolphus,  a  Montaigne,  a  Milton.  Reason  is  enthroned,  as  must 
needs  be  in  a  time  when  everything,  from  the  states  of  Europe  to 
the  Chinese  vases  in  the  lady's  boudoir,  is  arranged  according  to 
a  system.  Even  religion  undergoes  the  same  process;  and  the 
preacher  systematizes  his  doctrine  in  accordance  with  the  newly 
venerated  laws  of  reason,  and  formalizes  his  ritual  in  harmony 
with  the  social  conventionalities.  It  is  an  age  when 
"Life  in  her  creaking  shoes 

Goes,  and  more  formal  grows, 

A  round  of  calls  and  cues." 

Enthusiasm,  moral  passion,  spontaneous  emotion,  lofty  patriotism, 
— ^all  these  are  dead.  The  pendulum  has  swung  to  its  extreme  of 
convention  and  formality. 

Of  such  an  age  Alexander  Pope  fittingly  became  the  mouthpiece. 
Where  Davies  was  unsophisticated  and  enthusiastic.  Pope  was 
worldly  wise  and  world  weary.  Where  Davies  was  natural  and 
spontaneous,  Pope  was  artificial  and  rhetorical.  His  poem  (or 
"Essay,"  as  he  more  suitably  called  it,  for  rhetoric  is  not  poetry) 
has  no  concern  with  the  nature  of  man  and  God  in  relation  to 
conduct ;  its  concern  is  with  the  nature  of  man  and  God  as  material 
for  brilliant  epigram.  He  is  like  the  conversationalist  of  his 
century,  who  cared  not  so  much  what  he  said  as  how  he  said  it. 
God,  man,  and  immortality  are  made  the  means  to  a  glorification 
of  the  principle  of  that  order  which  "is  heaven's  first  law."  Not 
the  individual  soul,  not  the  relation  of  the  individual  soul  to  God 
and  Ufe,  not  the  destiny  of  the  individual  is  here  presented,  but 
the  system,  the  great  machine,  in  which  the  individual  is  but  a 
tiny  cog.  Davies  wished  to  know  himself  in  the  concrete;  Pope, 
as  he  himself  tells  us,  wishes  to  consider  "Man  in  the  abstract," 
and,  true  to  his  century's  love  of  syst«m,  "what  condition  and 


28  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

relation  (he)  is  placed  in,  and  what  is  the  proper  end  and  purpose 
of  (his)  being."' 

That  the  discussion  is  rationalistic,  too,  is  evident  at  the  outset. 
The  writer  who  inquires  "What  can  we  reason  but  from  what 
we  know?"^  and  sees  in  the  negative  answer  a  limit  to  his  power 
of  thought,  has  evidently  no  room  in  his  philosophy  for  faith  or 
intuition.  The  purpose  of  the  dissertion  is  ambitiously  stated  as 
to  "beat  this  ample  field"  of  the  "scene  of  man"  which  Pope 
beholds  thoroughly  systematized — 

"A  mighty  maze!  but  not  without  a  plan."^ 
The  whole  of  the  first  of  the  four  "epistles,"  presumably  addressed 
to  Bolingbroke,  is  devoted  to  the  proof  of  order  in  the  universe, 
unrefuted  by  the  evils  and  imperfections  which  offer  an  apparent 
contradiction  to  the  belief  in  a  benevolent  Providence  upholding 
this  order — this  chain  which  stretches 

"from  infinite  to  thee, 
From  thee  to  nothing."^ 

The  universe  is  compact  of  system  upon  system. 

"And  if  each  system  in  gradation  roll 
Alike  essential  to  the  amazing  Whole, 
The  least  confusion  but  in  one,  not  all 
That  system  only,  but  the  Whole  must  fall." 

What  a  similarity  to  the  arguments  for  maintaining  in  precarious 
equilibrium  upon  its  apex  the  trembling  pyramid  of  the  balance 
of  power  in  Europe! 

The  succeeding  parts  of  the  poem  study  the  nature  of  man  with 
respect  to  himself,  to  society,  and  to  happiness,  thus  echoing  the 
topics  which  engaged  the  philosophers  of  the  period  onward  from 
Hobbes.  Reason  is  glorified  as  "the  God  within  the  mind" 
which  negotiates  between  the  good  and  evil  passions  that  spring 
from  self-love.^  It  is  Reason  that  has  developed  man  from  the 
State  of  Nature  to  the  State  of  Art,'  showing  him  that  his  best 
means  of  saving  himself  is  by  saving  the  social  whole.  Happiness, 
since  no  individual  exists  alone,  but  only  as  a  part  of  the  system, 
must  consist  in  seeking  the  good  of  all;  in  other  words,  in  the 
final  conclusion, 

"Virtue  only  makes  our  bliss  below."8 

1  Ward's  ed.  of  Pope's  Works,  pp.  192-3.  '>  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  II.  247-250. 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  1.  18.  « Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  1.  204. 

3  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  1.  6.  '  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  1.  169. 

*  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  11.  240-241.  « Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  1.  397. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  29 

One  need  but  contrast  this  unexceptionable  conclusion  with  the 
known  facts  as  to  the  virtues  and  the  social  love  of  Bolingbroke, 
the  inspirer  of  the  poem,  to  realize  its  utter  artificiaht,y.  Artificial, 
too,  are  the  brilliant  epigrams,  often  dragged  into  the  argument 
by  an  obviously  forced  connection  because,  having  flashed  upon 
the  witty  mind  of  their  maker,  they  are  too  good  to  be  lost.  The 
polished,  sparkling  hardness  of  the  couplets  is  like  the  polish  and 
sparkle  of  the  literary  circle  that  enjoj^ed  its  own  wit  at  Dawley 
or  Twickenham.  The  couplet  was  the  convention  of  the  day,  so 
that  its  use  alone  could  not  convict  Pope  of  formality.  But  the 
couplet  as  used  by  Pope  has  no  similarity  to  the  couplet  as  used 
by  Goldsmith.  Form  in  itself  is  not  destructive  to  feeling.  But 
the  end-stopping  not  onl}'  of  lines  but  of  thoughts  becomes  mere 
mechanism;  and  the  sincerity  that  laments  not  only  the  vanishing 
of  the  substance  of  a  boyhood  memory  but  the  ill  fate  of  a  land 

''Where  wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay" 

has  no  precursor  in  the  specious  argument  that  seeks  to  prove  that 

"God  sends  not  ill,  if  rightty  understood, 
Or  partial  ill  is  universal  good."^ 

Neither  sincerity  nor  high  ideals  can  be  predicated  of  a  man  who 
in  a  poem  on  virtue  proudly  apostrophizes  the  vicious  Bolingbroke 
as  his  "guide,  philosopher  and  friend";  or  who,  vain,  selfish,  and 
deceitful  in  his  private  affairs,  enjoins  unselfishness,  charity, 
and  honest3^  This  is  not  the  counsel  of  the  humble  learner 
sharing  his  lesson  for  the  good  of  all;  it  is  the  arrogant  advice  of 
the  self-appointed  teacher,  who  least  of  all  had  learned  what  he 
presumed  to  teach.  Nor  can  spontaneous  enthusiasm  be  dis- 
covered in  a  poem  that  runs  its  cycle  between  a  not-too-modest 
statement  of  aim,  to  "vindicate  the  waj^s  of  God  to  man,"^  and 
a  declaration  that  the  great  purpose  has  been  accomplished  to 
his  own  satisfaction.^  The  enthusiasm  was  not  for  the  theme, 
but  for  Bolingbroke  its  inspirer  and  for  Pope's  own  treatment  of  it. 
Yet  the  merits  of  the  eighteenth  centurj'  are  Pope's.  Its 
surface  brilliancy  is  reflected  in  the  scintillating  couplets  of  his 
verse,  readable,  entertaining,  thought-provoking.  Its  surface 
courtesies,   which  made   life  graceful   and   gracious,   have   their 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  11.  113-114. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  1.  16. 

'  Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  11.  .391-398. 


30  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

parallel  in  the  facile  grace  of  his  phrasings.  Its  formal  gardens, 
like  his  precisely  turned  epigrams,  had  a  patterned  beauty  of 
their  own.  An  age  of  reason  is  less  stirring  than  an  age  of  enthu- 
siasm, but  less  deadening  than  an  age  of  bigotry  and  fanaticism. 
Order  may  not  be  heaven's  first  law,  but  chaos  was  dispelled  by 
light,  the  first  of  created  things.  Pope,  like  his  century,  has  the 
virtues  of  his  defects.  Convention  is  no  more  all  bad  than  revolt 
is  all  good.  The  pendulum  of  poetry,  as  of  life,  must  vibrate 
between  the  two,  and  Pope  and  his  period  represent  the  end  of 
the  swing  toward  the  artificial  and  conventional. 

Extremes  mean  change.  Once  the  extreme  is  reached,  nothing 
remains  but  to  turn  back.  When  the  extreme  is  revolt,  the  turn 
brings  reaction.  When  the  extreme  is  convention,  the  turn  brings 
revolution.  The  record  of  the  revolution  that  spans  the  century 
from  Pope  to  Tennyson  is  too  familiar  to  need  rehearsal.^  The 
England  that  saw  Tennyson  at  Cambridge  was  an  England  that 
had  witnessed  a  struggle,  hitherto  unsuccessful  except  in  the 
American  colonies,  for  freedom  from  conservative  Tory  control; 
an  England  that  had  watched  the  First  Republic  and  the  First 
Empire  rise  and  fall  in  France;  an  England  whose  Revolutionary 
poets  had  echoed  Rousseau's  ideals  of  human  brotherhood  and 
of  the  return  to  that  nature  where  dwelt  the  ''motion  and  (the) 
spirit"  which  were  God;  an  England  where  economic  control 
had  passed  from  the  hands  of  the  merchant  and  the  agriculturist 
into  the  hands  of  the  manufacturer,  and  where  industry  had 
moved  from  the  home  to  the  factory.  In  the  second  quarter  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  the  period  during  which  "In  Memoriam" 
grew,  there  began  to  be  worked  out  in  this  England,  in  terms  of 
practical  social  and  political  action,  the  hitherto  vague  economic 
doctrines  centering  around  the  value  of  the  individual  human 
being,  and  the  consequent  necessity  of  human  brotherhood  in 
fact  as  well  as  in  theory. 

In  spite  of  the  intervening  Revolution,  the  first  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century  shows  lingering  traces  of  the  eighteenth 
century  love  of  order  and  system.     Now  it  is  economic  theory 

*  For  facts  underlying  the  ensuing  historical  summary,  see  the  following: 
Marriott — England  Since  Waterloo. 
Robertson — England  Under  the  Hanoverians. 
Slater — Making  of  Modern  England. 
Innes — History  of  England  and  the  British  Empire,  Vols.  3  and  4. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  31 

that  is  reduced  to  a  code.  Adam  Smith  has  bequeathed  to  his 
country  the  Laissez  faire  doctrine  of  the  French  physiocrats,  by 
which  all  social  ills  are  to  be  remedied.  The  laws  which  govern 
population  and  wages  are  formulated  with  scientific  accuracy 
and  rigidity  by  Malthus  and  Ricardo.  If  the  order  lauded  by 
Pope  and  his  deistic  contemporaries  is  but  left  to  work  out  its 
own  perfect  devices  in  "the  best  of  all  possible  worlds,"  whatever 
is  will  soon  be  right.  But  alas  for  system!  Left  to  itself  the 
world  grows  worse.  The  so-beautiful  theory  does  not  materialize 
in  fact,  for  childhood  still  grows  up  in  hungry  ignorance  and  weak 
old  age  is  still  "in  corners  thrown,"  Moreover,  while  a  revolu- 
tionary bogie,  as  yet  unseen  in  England,  makes  itself  perceptible 
to  Enghsh  ears  in  the  savage  mutterings  of  rick-burners  and  of 
blanketeers  at  Peterloo,  it  is  impossible  for  an  aristocratic  govern- 
ment to  leave  the  world  quite  to  itself,  unhelped  by  repressive 
measures. 

So  the  failure  of  the  laissez  faire  doctrine  to  accomplish  practical 
results  leads  to  an  opposite  movement  in  the  direction  of  govern- 
ment control  of  economic  forces,  a  movement  slight  and  tentative 
at  first,  but  steadily  gaining  impetus.  At  the  same  time  the 
restlessness  of  an  unhappy,  poverty-stricken  multitude  under 
the  oppression  of  laws  forbidding  free  speech,  free  assembly,  free 
association,  makes  it  evident  to  eyes  which  can  read  the  signs 
of  the  times  that  some  panacea  other  than  repression  is  needed 
to  heal  the  economic  sores  of  England.  The  self-interest  of 
poUtician,  landlord,  and  manufacturer,  seeking  to  safeguard 
place  and  wealth,  joins  hands  with  the  awakened  conscience  of 
the  thinker  and  the  philanthropist,  striving  to  ameliorate  the 
wretchedness  of  the  masses.  The  humanitarian  movement  is 
bom  and  the  period  of  experimental  reform  begins. 

Reform  begins  at  the  top.  In  1832  an  aristocratic  parliament, 
with  a  side-glance  across  the  water  at  a  newly  made  Citizen 
Monarchy,  remakes  itself  into  a  bourgeois  but  yet  more  nearly 
representative  body.  The  reformed  parliament  enacts  measures 
never  sanctioned  by  its  Tory  predecessor.  The  long  pleading  of 
Wilberforce  is  Hstened  to  at  last  and  slavery  is  abolished  through- 
out the  Empire.  The  first  prison  reform  act  rewards  the  efforts 
of  John  Howard  and  Ehzabeth  Fry.  A  series  of  factory  laws 
asserts  the  right  of  the  government  to  regulate  the  hours  and 
conditions  of  industry,  especially  as  concerns  children.      A  new 


32  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

poor  law  seeks  to  reduce  the  pauperization  of  the  laborer  by- 
indiscriminate  charity.  For  the  first  time  public  money  is  appro- 
priated for  the  maintenance  of  schools — a  small  sum,  to  be  sure, 
less  than  that  for  the  royal  stables,  and  used  only  for  primary 
education,  the  only  sort  necessary  in  a  time  when  any  child  over 
nine  years  old  is  permitted  by  law  to  work.  Agitation  by  the 
Anti-Corn  Law  League,  helped  by  the  Irish  famine,  puts  an  end 
at  last  to  the  infamous  duties  on  imported  wheat  which  for  so 
long  have  taken  bread  from  the  mouths  of  the  workers.  The 
struggle  begun  by  the  ill-fated  Huskisson  culminates  in  free  trade 
and  the  consequent  possibihty  of  better  living  conditions  for 
labor. 

These  manifestations  of  the  reforming  spirit  of  the  years 
immediately  before  and  after  Victoria's  accession  were  all  in  the 
form  of  work  done  by  the  upper  and  middle  classes  for  the  lower 
classes.  They  were  benevolent  and  philanthropic,  not  democratic. 
The  poor  were  not  expected  or  desired  to  seek  to  help  themselves. 
Trade  unions  were  permitted,  but  feared  and  hated.  And  the 
great  ebullition  of  democracy  among  the  masses,  the  Chartist 
movement,  was  shuddered  at  with  the  same  horror  that  its  descend- 
ant, Bolshevism,  was  one  day  to  engender.  None  the  less,  the 
reforming  tendency  which  directed  EngUsh  domestic  policy  in 
the  years  from  1830  to  1850  had  for  its  motive  the  desire  to  help 
the  individual  citizen  as  a  means  of  benefiting  the  social  whole, 
and  for  its  inspiration  the  sense  of  the  value  of  that  individual 
as  such,  and  of  human  brotherhood  as  the  basis  of  social  organiza- 
tion. 

The  passion  for  reform  has  underlying  it  much  of  a  restless 
desire  to  change  an  existing  order.  Such  a  passion  for  change  is 
apparent  in  others  than  the  reformers  of  the  period.  Poets, 
essayists,  novelists  preached  the  gospel  of  social  reform.  Scien- 
tists and  philosophers  were  opening  new  and  startling,  and,  to 
their  own  age,  dangerous-seeming  paths  of  thought.  Evolution 
had  been  discovered;  a  live  utilitarianism  had  developed  from 
rationalism.  The  nineteenth  century  strife  between  science  and 
rehgion,  so  unnecessary  and  so  inevitable,  was  beginning.  Doubt 
and  question  were  in  the  air.  Every  man  who  thought — and 
more  men  thought  than  formerly — wondered  about  life,  about 
his  own  relation  to  life,  about  God,  about  his  own  relation  to 
God.     Abstract  and  introspective  problems  filled  the  minds  not 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  33 

only  of  the  Teufelsdrockhs  but  of  the  Alton  Lockes.  The  sense 
of  the  value  of  the  individual  reverted  to  its  source;  each  self 
was  of  supreme  importance  to  himself. 

Introspective  thought  oftenest  means  moral  or  religious  thought. 
The  term  "Victorian"  has  achieved,  because  of  the  developing 
character  of  the  Middle  and  Late  portions  of  the  period,  an 
unenviable  connotation  which  makes  the  morals  indicated  by  it 
mere  prudishness  and  the  religion  only  religiosity.  But  Early 
Victorianism  was  free  of  both  taints;  what  had  become  conven- 
tional in  1860  was  fresh  and  spontaneous  in  1840.  A  reUgious 
enthusiasm  that  later  would  find  outlet  only  in  the  bigotry  of  the 
Bradshaws  and  Bulstrodes  and  the  Sabbatarianism  of  the  Mrs. 
Proudies  was,  in  the  third  decade  of  the  century,  making  channels 
for  itself  in  two  directions,  both  due  to  reaction  against  the  deca- 
dent, lifeless  condition  of  the  Anglican  Church.  Tractarianism 
sought  to  elevate  ideals  and  standards  within  the  church  by 
asserting  its  Catholic  position;  latitudinarianism  sought  to 
broaden  the  field  of  the  church  by  making  less  rigid  its  insistence 
on  dogma  and  ritual.  Standards  of  judgment  were  religious  and 
ethical;  just  as  entrance  to  Oxford  and  degree-holding  from 
Cambridge  were  tested  by  the  applicant's  religious  afl51iation, 
so  art,  literature,  and  educational  progress  were  estimated,  not 
by  their  aesthetic  or  intellectual  efifect,  but  by  their  probable 
bearing  on  belief  and  conduct.  What  matter  that  Shelley  sang 
divinely,  if  he  lived,  according  to  his  countrymen's  ideals,  dia- 
bolically? As  Elizabeth  gave  her  name  to  an  age  of  enthusiasm 
whose  passion  was  adventure;  as  Anne  bequeathed  hers  to  an 
artificial  age  whose  passion  was  (paradoxically)  system;  so  did 
the  third  great  queen,  Victoria,  become  sponsor  for  a  humanitarian 
age  whose  passion  was  religion.  And  because  religion,  stronger 
than  any  human  motive  except  the  patriotism  and  the  love  to 
which  it  is  akin,  has  power  to  inspire  great  emotion,  great  enthu- 
siasm, great  poetry,  Tennyson's  religious  outburst  of  emotion  in 
the  eloquent  cantos  of  "In  Memoriam"  is  a  natural  expression 
of  the  life  of  his  century  at  its  best. 

The  introspective  character  of  the  time,  when  generaUzation 
was  based  on  self-analysis  and  when  consciousness  of  the  unity 
and  the  needs  of  the  social  whole  grew  out  of  an  enlightened  self- 
consciousness,  is  reflected  in  the  attitude  of  Tennyson  to  his 
subject.     Davies,  with  didactic  intent,  analyzed  the  soul — any 


34  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

soul — exhorting  other  men  to  similar  study.  Pope,  rhetorical 
and  systematic,  established  the  soul — any  soul — as  a  part  of  the 
eternal  order  of  things.  Tennyson,  out  of  agony  and  struggle, 
let  his  own  soul  speak,  in  a  self-revelation  more  convincing  than 
analysis  or  logic.  It  is  not  the  soul  of  man  in  the  abstract  with 
which  he  deals;  rather  he  chooses  to  record,  in  words  pregnant 
with  personal  emotion,  the  travail  of  his  own  soul  on  the  journey 
from  doubt  to  faith;  and,  in  recording,  to  imply  his  philosophy 
of  the  soul,  not  formulated  in  a  single  short-lived  exertion  of 
reason,  but  growing  through  long  years  "from  more  to  more." 
Never  for  a  moment  does  the  poet  of  "In  Memoriam"  forget  the 
relation  of  the  theme  of  immortahty  to  his  own  "grief  for  one 
removed."  Therefore  never  for  a  moment,  however  he  may 
generalize,  does  he  cease  to  be  introspective. 

Nor  is  the  interpretation  of  the  theme  ever  psychological  and 
metaphysical,  Hke  Davies';  or  rhetorical  and  rational,  Uke  Pope's. 
Always  the  religious  chord  is  dominant,  from  its  inception  in 
thriUing  harmony  in  the  "We  have  but  faith"  of  the  prelude,* 
through  the  minor  thirds  and  sevenths  of  "calm  despair  and 
wild  unrest,"^  to  the  triumphant  major  diapason  of  confidence  in 

"That  God,  which  ever  lives  and  loves."' 
Davies,  true  Elizabethan  that  he  was,  inscribed  his  work  to  his 
great  queen;   Pope  called  upon  his  St.  John  for  inspiration;   but 
Tennyson,  as  deeply  religious  as  his  contemporaries,  will  dedicate 
a  poem  of  immortality  to  none  but  the 

"  Strong  Son  of  God,  immortal  Love,"* 
in  whom,  bereft  of  proof,  he  still  believes. 

The  struggle  of  faith  with  doubt  so  characteristic  of  the  middle 
nineteenth  century  finds  voice  in  many  a  familiar  line  of  "In 
Memoriam."     Now  it  is  the  honest  agnostic  who  speaks,  he  who 
"after  toil  and  storm 
(May)  seem  to  have  reached  a  purer  air. 
Whose  faith  has  centre  everywhere, 
Nor  cares  to  fix  itself  to  form";* 

or  he  who  can  only 

"stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope. 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  (he  feels)  is  Lord  of  all."' 

»  Works  oj  Tennyson,  Cambridge  Edition,  p.  163.    *  Ihid.,  p.  163. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  XI.  •  Ibid.,  Canto  XXXIII. 

•  Jhid.,  p.  198.  •  Ihid.,  Canto  LV. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  35 

Now  it  is  the  latitudinarian  Christian,  realizing  the  narrowness 
of  the  formal  creed,  but  clinging  to  the  heart  of  love  behind  it, 
who  speaks  his  loyalty  to  that  Word  who  wrought 

"With  human  hands  the  creed  of  creeds 
In  loveliness  of  perfect  deeds";* 

or  who,  in  a  sincere  and  spiritualized  version  of  the  false  old 
platitude  "Whatever  is  is  right,"  trusts  dimly 

"  that  good  shall  fall 
At  last — far  off — at  last,  to  all."* 

Much  of  the  spiritual  struggle  of  Tennyson,  as  of  his  age,  grew 
out  of  an  awareness  of  the  achievements  of  that  science  to  which 
the  Wilberforces  and  Gladstones  obstinately  closed  their  eyes. 
A  dread  of  the  materialism  which  he  saw  on  every  side  surely 
inspired  his  view  of  Time  as  "a  maniac  scattering  dust"  and  life 
as  "a  Fury  slinging  flame,"^  and  was  repudiated  in  the  conviction 
that  man,  who  loved,  suffered,  and  battled  for  truth  would  not 
"Be  blown  about  the  desert  dust."* 

Echoes  of  the  evolutionary  discoveries  of  the  period  are  not 
absent,  ringing  with  a  conservative  dislike  of  a  "Nature  red  in 
tooth  and  claw;"*  refusing  to  countenance  the  science  which 
might  prove  men  only  "cunning  casts  in  clay";  claiming  a  higher 
birth  than  to 

"shape 
His  action  like  the  greater  ape."" 

Most  of  all,  perhaps,  is  the  humanitarianism  of  the  period 
fragrant  in  the  loveliest  stanzas  of  the  poem.  True  blessedness  is 
theirs  "whose  lives  are  faithful  prayers."'  The  man  of  pure 
deeds,  however  "perplext  in  faith,"  at  last  will  "beat  his  music 
out."^  New  Year's  bells  are  to  "ring  out  the  feud  of  rich  and 
poor,"  to  ring  in  "the  larger  heart,  the  kindlier  hand."'  A  deep 
voice  sounds 

"across  the  storm 
Proclaiming  social  truth  shall  spread."'' 

» Ibid.,  Canto  XXXVI.  •  Ibid.,  Canto  CXX. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  LIV.  '  Ibid.,  Canto  XXXIII. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  L.  » Ibid.,  Canto  XCVI. 

*  Ibid.,  Canto  LVI.  » Ibid.,  Canto  CVI. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  LVI.  "  Ibid.,  Canto  CXXVII. 


36  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Honor  for  purity  and  kindliness  of  deed,  reiterated  and  resung, 
might  serve  as  keynote  of  an  age  when  kindliness  of  deed  was 
made  the  substance  of  acts  of  Parliament.  How  far  afield  is  this 
love  of  sheer  kindness  from  the  selfish  egotism  that  praised  without 
conviction  an  academic  virtue! 

As  the  three  poems  are  unlike  because  of  the  variant  characters 
of  their  makers,  so  equally  are  they  unlike  because  of  the  characters 
of  the  times  that  produced  the  makers.  Patriotic  enthusiasm, 
artificial  rationalism,  reUgious  humanitarianism — like  fruits  can- 
not grow  of  such  soils  any  more  than  grapes  can  be  gathered  of 
thorns  or  figs  of  thistles.  How  can  the  poet  help  reflecting  his 
time?  His  mind,  by  his  very  temperament,  is  not  so  much  a 
mirror  as  a  sensitized  plate.  And  how,  then,  can  he  be  original 
in  his  philosophy?  Yet  so  summary  a  view  of  the  poets  in  relation 
to  their  times  is  but  superficial,  and  prone  to  the  injustice  of 
hasty  generaUzation.  A  detailed  study  of  the  three  poems  in 
relation  to  certain  phases  of  the  thought  of  their  periods,  as  seen 
in  scholarship,  in  Uterature,  and  in  theology,  will  either  corroborate 
or  disprove  this  incomplete  view. 


IV 

The  scholarship  of  the  artist,  unless  his  mind  is  of  purely  aca- 
demic growth,  must  fonn  little  more  than  the  background  for  the 
play  of  his  creative  or  interpretive  imagination  and  of  his  artistic 
technique.  Sound  science  may  lie  back  of  Shelley's  "Cloud"; 
but  too  clear  a  perception  of  Shelley  the  scientist  would  mar  the 
magic  of  the  music  and  imagery  of  Shelley  the  poet.  The  artist's 
pioneer  work  is  done  in  his  own  field,  not  in  that  of  the  scholar; 
so,  however  original  he  may  be  in  thought  or  style,  his  scholarship 
is  not  likely  to  be  in  advance  of  the  scholarship  of  his  time  and 
will  be  more  or  less  dependent  for  its  limits  upon  the  condition  of 
knowledge  among  his  learned  contemporaries.  Is  such  a  proposi- 
tion wholly  true  of  the  philosophical  poet?  Or  is  the  very  nature 
of  his  theme  such  as  to  call  for  independent  progress  in  the  realm 
of  knowledge? 

Scholarship  informs  every  line  of  "Nosce  Teipsum."  Is  that 
scholarship  determined  by  the  advancement  of  the  age  in  learning, 
and  merely  an  index  of  that  advancement?  The  question  can 
be  answered  only  by  a  survey  of  the  educational  conditions  of 
which  Sir  John  Davies  was  a  product. 

Long  before  Davies  began  to  write,  the  humanist  movement 
had  reached  its  triumph  in  all  learned  and  cultured  circles.  Schol- 
asticism, as  a  controlling  influence  in  the  universities  and  among 
the  learned,  had  had  its  day.  Yet  a  method  of  thought  dominant 
for  six  centuries  was  not  to  be  cast  aside  and  forgotten  in  fifty 
years.  Humanism  among  the  learned  did  not  mean  humanism 
among  the  people  at  large.  And  even  among  the  learned,  against 
their  will,  scholasticism  lingered,  cropping  up  to  the  surface  with- 
out intention,  often  without  recognition,  so  much  a  part  was  it  of 
the  scholar's  mental  make-up.  An  ingrained  habit  of  thought, 
like  an  ingrained  belief,  is  hardly  to  be  outgrown  in  a  generation. 
As  the  modern  agnostic,  set  free  from  the  orthodox  creed  in  which 
he  was  reared,  is  humiliated  to  find  himself  in  unguarded  moments 
reverting  to  the  orthodoxies  of  his  childhood,  so  must  the  humanist 
of  the  sixteenth  century  not  infrequently  have  rebuked  himself 
for  thinking  scholastically. 

Nor  was  mediae valism  dead.  The  popularity  of  Spenser's 
allegories  attests  its  life.     The  creed  of  the  early  poet,  that  poetry 

37 


38  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

had  a  right  to  exist  only  as  the  servant  of  morals,  was  not  an 
outworn  creed,  even  though  poets  of  wider  vision  were  discovering 
that  beauty  and  poetic  significance  in  verse  were  their  own  excuse 
for  being.  The  didactic  spirit  was  as  mediaeval  then  as  it  is  Victo- 
rian now.  And  while  mediaevalism  lived,  scholasticism  was  alive. 
Its  influence  was  sure  to  be  more  evident  in  a  philosophical  poem 
than  in  any  other  art  form;  for  though  Renaissance  art  had 
superseded  mediaeval  art,  and  Renaissance  learning  had  displaced 
mediaeval  learning,  there  had  as  yet  arisen  no  Hobbes  and  no 
Descartes  to  usher  in  a  modern  school  of  philosophy.  The  surprise 
is  not  to  find  Davies  influenced  by  scholastic  philosophy,  but  to 
find  a  man,  by  profession  a  lawyer,  by  avocation  a  poet,  and  only 
by  accident  a  philosopher,  whose  system  of  thought  is  anything 
other  than  scholastic. 

A  study  of  Davies'  analysis  of  the  soul,  its  nature,  its  origin, 
its  relation  to  the  body,  its  faculties,  and  its  immortality,  reveals 
immediately  a  close  resemblance  to  the  famous  Aristotelian 
system  of  the  Schoolmen.  In  a  decade  when  Plato's  philosophy, 
no  less  than  Aristotle's  ethics,  had  been  brought  to  the  attention 
of  a  poetry-loving  public  by  the  great  poetic  achievement  of 
Spenser,  appears  a  philosophic  poem  based  wholly  on  the  phil- 
osophy of  Aristotle,  and  containing  references  to  Plato's  doctrines 
only  for  the  purpose  of  refutation.  This  could  hardly  have  been 
the  case,  had  Davies  not  been  willing  to  accept  well-established 
and  familiar  philosophical  opinions  as  he  found  them,  devoting 
his  efifort  to  putting  them  into  the  literary  form  that  at  that 
time  would  command  most  notice  from  a  generation  that  loved 
verse.  That  a  graduate  of  Oxford  and  a  barrister  of  the  Temple 
knew  Aristotle  in  the  original  is  no  more  to  be  doubted  than  that 
he  knew  Plato.  But  the  Aristotle  whom  we  find  in  his  pages  is  the 
Aristotle  of  the  Schoolmen,  used  by  them  as  the  provider  of  a 
method  by  which  they  could  carry  out  their  purpose  of  making 
faith  and  reason  agree.^  And  nowhere,  not  even  in  the  portion 
of  "Nosce  Teipsum"  which  deals  with  immortality,  the  reahty 
of  which  Plato  discussed  in  the  "Phaedo"  which  Davies  must 
have  known,  is  there  the  least  sign  of  any  consultation  of  the 
Platonic  philosophy .^    This  adoption  of  Aristotle  and  indifference 

1  Perrier,  in  Revival  of  Scholastic  Philosophy,  p.  17,  quotes  from  Elie  Blanc's 
"  Dictionnaire  de  philosophie  ancienne,  moderne,  et  contemporaine." 
*  Pneath,  Philosophy  in  Poetry,  p.  210. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  39 

to  Plato  suggests  that  Davies  was  content  to  follow  in  the  path 
of  Aquinas  and  Everard  Digby  rather  than  that  of  Erigena  and 
William  Temple.*  His  contribution  to  thought  is  literary  rather 
than  philosophical;  he  is  not  concerned  with  making  a  new 
system,  but  with  presenting  the  old  system  in  a  form  hitherto 
unused.  If  he  knew  the  work  of  Giordano  Bruno,^  who  before 
this  time  had  visited  England,  he  shows  no  signs  of  being  touched 
by  his  revolt  against  the  scholastic  system  or  by  his  message 
that  humanity  and  nature  alike  were  animated  by  a  world-soul. 
The  pantheistic  idealism  of  Plato,  brought  to  life  again  by  Bruno,' 
has  no  place  in  Davies.  To  him,  as  to  the  Schoolmen,  the  universe 
was  not  an  organic  unity  but  a  dualism*  of  God  and  the  world, 
just  as  man  was  a  dualism  of  soul  and  body. 

Besides  the  metaphysics  of  Aristotle's  "De  Anima,"  there  are 
echoes  in  Davies'  pages  of  the  teachings  of  the  church  fathers, 
notably  Origen  and  Nemesius;^  but  the  ancient  Greek  philos- 
ophers are  quoted  only  as  perpetrators  of  ideas  which  the  poet 
wishes  to  refute.  For  example,  in  discussing  the  question  what 
the  soul  is,  Davies  answers  first  negatively,  by  cataloguing  various 
things  which  the  soul  is  not,  but  which  many  "great  clerks" 
have  thought  it  to  be.*  Professor  Sneath,  by  a  comparison  of 
this  passage  in  "Nosce  Teipsum"  with  similar  passages  in  Aris- 
totle, Cicero,  and  Nemesius,  who  mention  the  philosophers 
responsible  for  the  various  opinions,  has  identified  the  author  of 
each  of  the  theories  which  in  Davies'  view  show  so  "little  wis- 
dome."^  Thus,  it  is  Diogenes  who  "thinks  the  soul  is  aire"; 
Zeno  and  the  Stoics  called  it  fire;  Critias  explained  it  as  "blood, 

1  Cambridge  History,  Vol.  IV,  p.  315,  sq.  Everard  Digby  taught  logic  at 
Cambridge,  1573  sq.  William  Temple  was  his  pupil  and  later  also  taught 
logic  until  1582.  About  1580  occurred  a  controversy  between  them  regarding 
the  old  and  the  new  logic,  in  which  Digby  defended  the  Aristotelian  and 
Temple  the  Platonic  method. 

' 1548-1600. 

'  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  239-242. 

*  Lindsay,  Stitdies  in  European  Philosophy,  p.  142. 
Rickaby,  Scholasticism. 

Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  pp.  45,  52-60,  where  the  poet  explains  the  creation 
of  the  soul  by  God. 

Sneath,  Philosophy  in  Poetry,  p.  113, 
» Ilrid.,  pp.  38,  39-47,  115-129. 

•  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  pp.  26-27. 
^  Sneath,  pp.  65-79. 


40  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

diffus'd  about  the  heart";  Plato  traced  it  to  the  conspiring  of  the 
elements;  while  Galen  the  physician,  a  materialist  of  ancient 
time,  made  it  spring  from  "the  bodie's  humours,  temp'red  well," 
and  the  Sophists  and  Sceptics  thought  it  "a  fine  perfection  of  the 
sense."  As  all  these  views  of  the  soul  were  by  the  Schoolmen 
rejected  in  favor  of  Aristotle's,  not  because  they  were  pagan,  but 
because  they  were  adapted  but  poorly  to  the  process  of  upholding 
faith  by  reason;  so  they  are  rejected  by  Davies,  who  in  a  less 
academic  and  more  practical  way  is  attempting,  like  the  School- 
men, to  establish  a  faith  which  will  serve  as  foundation  for  conduct. 
Indeed,  one  of  the  ways  in  which  he  most  shows  that  his  work  is 
colored  by  their  influence  is  the  fact  that  he  thought  religious 
doctrine  admitted  of  rational  proof.^  There  was  little  more  of 
the  mystic  in  Davies  than  there  was  in  Thomas  Aquinas,  in  spite 
of  the  prelude  in  which  he  ascribes  all  possible  power  to  under- 
stand the  mysteries  of  the  soul  to  "the  cleare  lampe  of  Thy 
Oracle  divine."  Having  declared  his  faith  in  revelation,  he  follows 
the  path  of  reason. 

A  close  comparison  of  "Nosce  Teipsum"  with  any  outline  of 
scholastic  philosophy^  will  serve  to  show  how  little  Davies'  meta- 
physics is  in  advance  of  that  of  his  teachers.     For  instance, 

"  The  soule  a  substance,  and  a  spirit  is, 
to  the  body  knit."^ 

In  scholastic  definition,  the  soul  was  a  substantial  form  of  the 
body,'*  essentially  simple  and  spiritual.  In  both  cases,  substance 
meant  that  which  exists  by  itself,  so  that  the  soul's  existence  was 
assumed  to  be  independent  of  the  body.  On  this  dualism  both 
the  Schoolmen  and  the  poet  based  their  proof  of  the  soul's  immor- 
tality. Davies  devotes  considerable  space  to  the  proposition 
that  the  soul  is  a  separate  entity,  basing  his  argument  on  the 
things  the  soul  can  do  without  the  body,  and  concluding, 

"Then  her  selfe-being  nature  shines  in  this, 

That  she  performs  her  noblest  works  alone."' 

But  the  soul,  though  independent,  has  no  bodily  form  of  its  own. 
"Shee  her  selfe  is  bodilesse  and  free,"  says  Davies,  although 

»  Lindsay,  pp.  119,  129. 

*  Eg.,  Lindsay,  Perrier,  Rickaby,  Seth. 
'  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  p.  29. 

*  Perrier,  p.  115. 

»  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  p.  35. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  41 

"she  is  confin'd"  in  the  body.^  The  substance  of  the  soul,  say 
the  Schoolmen,  is  immaterial  and  incorporeal. ^ 

One  of  the  famous  theological  controversies  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  between  the  creationist  and  the  traducianist  theories  of  the 
origin  of  the  soul,  is  perpetuated  by  Davies.^  According  to  the 
first  of  these  theories,  "every  individual  soul  is  an  absolute, 
immediate  creation  on  the  part  of  God."  According  to  the 
second,  all  souls  were  created  once  for  all  in  the  beginning,  and  as 
each  body  has  come  to  birth  its  particular  soul  has  been  detached 
from  the  mass  and  united  to  the  individual  })ody.  This  theory 
grew  up  as  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  some  of  the  church  fathers 
to  absolve  God  from  the  responsibility  of  having  created  man's 
sin  along  with  man's  soul.  It  was  the  creationist  theory  that 
triumphed  among  the  Schoolmen,  and  it  is  the  creationist  theory 
that  Davies  defends,  citing  and  refuting  the  objections  of  believers 
in  pre-existence  and  in  traducianism.  Both  were  objections  that 
must  have  been  represented  among  the  contemporary  readers 
of  "Nosce  Teipsum."  For  we  are  told  that  the  Lutherans  favored 
traducianism,*  and  Shakespeare,  in  "The  Merchant  of  Venice," 
"As  You  Like  It,"  and  "Twelfth  Night,"  supplies  us  with  evidence 
of  the  popular  interest  in  the  doctrines  of  Pythagoras.* 

Having  taken  his  stand  with  the  Schoolmen  on  creationism, — 

"As  God's  handmaid,  Nature,  doth  create 
Bodies  in  time  distinct,  and  order  due ; 
So  God  gives  soules  the  like  successive  date, 
Which  Himself e  makes,  in  bodies  formed  new:" — » 

Davies  is  compelled  to  follow  scholastic  leadership  on  the  subject 
of  the  harmony  between  divine  sovereignty  and  human  freedom. 
His  interpretation  of  sin  and  the  fall,  a  topic  to  be  considered 
more  fully  in  the  discussion  of  the  theology  of  the  poem,  is  based 
on  Aquinas's  casuistic  argument  which  seeks  to  establish  pre- 
destination while  avoiding  determinism.' 

»/6id.,  p.  41. 
'  Lindsay,  p.  140. 

*  Sneath,  p.  116  sq. 
*Ibid.,  p.  133. 

» Merchant  of  Venice,  Act  IV,  Sc.  1,  11.  130-138. 
As  You  Like  It,  Act  III,  Sc.  2,  11.  186-188. 
Tu^elfth  Night,  Act  IV,  Sc.  2,  11.  54-65. 

*  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  p.  47. 
7  Perrier,  pp.  151-152. 


42  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  the  reality  of  Davies'  debt  to 
scholasticism.  But  had  his  work  stopped  with  the  mere  versifica- 
tion of  a  moribund  philosophical  system,  he  would  not  be  remem- 
bered as  the  earliest  confessedly  philosophical  poet  of  England. 
For  except  as  a  system  of  Catholic  theology,  scholasticism  was 
dying,  or  dead.  In  a  strong  affirmative  Davies  answers  the  ques- 
tion asked  at  every  time  of  transition  from  an  old  system  to  a 
new,  "Son  of  man,  can  these  bones  live?"  It  is  not  the  philosophy 
of  the  poem  that  makes  it  alive,  but  the  vivid  thought  and  language 
that  clothe  the  philosophy,  and  the  fact  that  while  in  metaphysics 
it  reflects  mediaeval  thought,  in  attitude  to  other  branches  of 
Elizabethan  learning  it  is  well  abreast  of  its  time. 

For  instance,  the  very  fact  that  Davies  was  so  scholastic  a 
metaphysician  makes  him  all  the  more  apparently  an  exemplar 
of  the  period  when  the  dominant  theological  interest  in  art  and 
literature  was  gradually  yielding  to  the  secular  interest.  Davies' 
motive  was  both  didactic  and  theological;  but  evidences  are 
abundant  that  he  was  the  product  of  that  humanistic  age  when 
the  treasures  of  secular  classical  Uterature  had  been  made  accessi- 
ble not  only  to  the  scholar  but  to  the  popular  reader.  Like  all 
the  literary  artists  of  his  time,  he  found  in  "bookes  prophane" 
the  material  for  simile  and  metaphor  with  which  to  illuminate 
many  an  abstract  statement.  The  myth  of  Eden,  the  forbidden 
fruit,  and  the  Spirit  of  Lies  stand  cheek  by  jowl  with  allusions 
to  the  "sky-stolne  fire"  of  Prometheus,  the  ''false  payles"  of  the 
Danaides,  and  the  ''firie  coach"  of  Phaethon.^  lo,  terrified  at 
the  watery  image  of  "herselfe  transformed  she  wist  not  how," 
is  a  figure  of  the  fright  of  the  soul  at  knowledge  of  itself.^  The 
soul  travels  skyward  "without  a  Pegasus."^  The  harmony  of 
wit  and  will  in  which  the  heavenly  choir  praises  God  is 

"Amphion's  lyre. 
Wherewith  he  did  the  Theban  citie  found."* 

Myths  of  Medea  and  Ulysses,  side  by  side  with  stories  of  Mutius 
and  Marius,  are  cited  to  prove  the  courage  and  wisdom  of  the 
soul.  The  immediate  creation  of  the  soul  by  God  is  likened  to  the 
springing  of  Minerva  from  the  head  of  Jove.^    Martha,  "busie — 

*  Grosart'8  ed.  of  Daviea,  p.  17.  *  Ibid.,  p.  35. 

*  IHd.,  p.  21.  »  Ibid.,  pp.  45-46. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  31. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  43 

the  household  things  to  doe,"  appears  in  the  same  stanza  with 
a  "Dryas,  living  in  a  tree."^  Memory,  localized  "in  the  braine 
behinde,"  is  "like  Janus'  eye."^  The  soul,  transported  to  heaven, 
"doth  .  .  ,  manna  eat,  and  nectar  drinke."^  Secular  and 
sacred  classical  allusions  are  thus  inextricably  interwoven  in  the 
fabric  of  poetic  art,  as  they  were  in  the  fabric  of  current  thought. 
For  the  remarkable  fact  is  that  the  casual  use  by  Davies  of  these 
characters  of  classic  lore,  as  a  means  of  ensuring  a  better  under- 
standing of  his  ideas,  presupposes  a  general  knowledge  of  the 
classics  on  the  part  of  the  reading  public.  The  translators  of  the 
sixteenth  century  had  made  common  property,  possessed  by 
churchman  and  layman  alike,  of  Plutarch  and  Ovid,  Euripides 
and  Plautus,  Homer  and  Vergil.  The  presence  of  mediaeval 
metaphysics  in  close  intermixture  with  humanistic  breadth  in 
Davies'  pages  shows  him  the  child  of  a  century  whose  door  swung 
at  once  back  into  the  past  of  cold  asceticism  and  forward  into  the 
future  of  radiantly  human  art. 

Standing  at  the  end  of  a  century  whose  paramount  interest  in 
the  field  of  learning  had  been  the  development  of  literary  art, 
Davies  stood  also  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  whose  educa- 
tional advance  was  to  proceed  along  the  line  of  a  paramount 
interest  in  physical  science.  To  the  dawning  light  of  that  new 
sun  of  knowledge  the  poet  was  keenly  awake,  and  in  this  pro- 
gressive awareness  of  the  most  recent  of  contemporary  tendencies, 
he  ran  far  ahead  of  his  metaphysical  masters.  For  one  of  the 
reasons  for  the  breakdown  of  scholasticism  was  its  opposition  to 
progressive  knowledge,  and  its  refusal  to  accommodate  its  system 
to  the  newly  developing  physical  science  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury.* In  the  work  of  Davies,  however  didactic  his  intention  may 
be,  however  theological  his  terminology  in  certain  passages,  it  is 
patent  that  his  wholesome  interest  in  secular  learning  is  that  of 
the  layman.  For  instance,  the  Schoolmen,  wholly  theological  in 
motive,  had  not  worked  out  with  anything  like  completeness  any 
system  of  psychology.  Davies,  interested  in  the  soul  from  other 
viewpoints  than  the  theological,  realized  that  his  analysis  was  not 
complete  if  it  did  not  include  a  psychological  treatment  of  the 
soul — though  it  is  quite  certain  that  he  did  not  call  it  by  that 
name.     So,  in  the  section  of  the  poem  which  explains  "How  the 

I  Ibid.,  p.  64.  5  Ibid.,  p.  90. 

» Ibid.,  p.  72.  *  Perrier,  p.  153. 


44  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Soul  doth  exercise  her  Powers  in  the  Body,"*  he  makes  a  crude  and 
inconclusive  but  very  real  attempt  at  an  exposition  of  the  relations 
among  the  senses,  the  emotions,  and  the  will.  To  his  reading  of 
Aristotle's  classification  of  the  senses  and  faculties  he  adds  his 
own  knowledge  of  the  infant  physics  and  physiology  of  his  time. 
However  unformed  may  be  the  scientific  method  which  makes  so 
sharp  a  cleavage  as  does  Davies  between  soul  and  sense,  in  his 
presentation  of  the  work  of  the  physical  senses  as  instruments  of 
the  mental  powers  can  be  discerned  the  germ  of  physiological 
psychology.     "These,"  says  he  of  the  senses, 

"are  the  outward  instruments  of  Sense, 
These  are  the  guards  which  everything  must  passe 
Ere  it  approch  the  mind's  intelligence, 
Or  touch  the  Fantasie,  Wit's  looking-glasse."^ 

In  the  same  passage  where  Davies  analyzes  the  work  of  the 
senses  may  be  seen  indicated  the  chaotic  state  of  science  in  the 
Elizabethan  age,  when  actual  observation  of  fact  was  only  begin- 
ning to  supplant  traditions  based  on  Pliny's  "Natural  History." 
Thus,  a  rudimentary  understanding  of  the  infant  science  of  optics 
appears  in  a  description  of  the  eyes  which  seems  to  imply  familiar- 
ity with  the  work  of  Kepler : 

"They  no  beames  unto  their  objects  send; 
But  all  the  rays  are  from  their  objects  sent, 
And  in  the  eyes  with  pointed  angles  end: 

"If  th'  objects  be  farre  off,  the  rayes  doe  meete 

In  a  sharpe  point,  and  so  things  seeme  but  small ; 
If  they  be  neere,  their  rayes  doe  spread  and  fleet. 
And  make  broad  points,  that  things  seeme  great  withall."3 

But  close  after  this  fairly  happy  hit  at  the  laws  of  perspective, 
follows  a  remarkable  physiological  discovery  of  the  reason  for  the 
intricate  construction  of  the  ear: 

"That  they  (sounds)  may  not  pierce  too  violently, 
They  are  delaied  with  turnes,  and  windings  oft. 

"For  should  the  voice  directly  strike  the  brain. 
It  would  astonish  and  confuse  it  much ; 
Therefore  these  plaits  and  folds  the  sound  restraine, 
That  it  the  organ  may  more  gently  touch. "< 

1  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  pp.  63-80.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  66. 

» Ibid.,  p.  70.  *  Ibid^  P.  67. 


The  Poet  a3  Philosopher  45 

Again,  a  fairly  correct  idea  of  the  structure  of  the  nervous  system 
is  implied: 

"For  all  those  nerves,  which  spirits  of  Sence  doe  beare, 
And  to  those  outward  organs  spreading  goe; 
United  are,  as  in  a  center  there  (in  the  forehead) 
And  there  this  power  those  sundry  formes  doth  know."' 

But  almost  immediately  after,  the  heart,  instead  of  being  regarded 
as  a  merely  bodily  organ,  is  made  literally  the  seat  of  the  passions, 
as  the  brain  is  of  the  intellect : 

"  Sith  the  braine  doth  lodge  the  powers  of  Sense, 
How  makes  it  in  the  heart  those  passions  spring?"* 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  mention  here  the  interesting  by-products 
of  Da  vies'  discussion  of  the  senses.  In  the  case  of  four  out  of  the 
five  he  points  out  a  special  moral  and  a  special  aesthetic  use  of 
each  sense.  Thus,  the  highest  use  of  the  eyes  is  to  be  found  "in 
another  World,"'  where  "face  to  face  they  may  their  Maker  see"; 
the  chief  use  of  the  ears  is  to  hear  the  speech 

"which  God's  heralds  sound. 
When  their  tongs  utter  what  His  Spirit  did  pen";* 

while  the  sense  of  smell  allows  incense 

"To  make  men's  spirits  apt  for  thoughts  divine."' 

As  for  the  fine  arts,  the  sense  of  sight  is  the  source  of  the  art  of 
painting;  the  sense  of  hearing  "gentle  Musicke  found";*  taste 
has  developed  the  art  of  cookery;^  and  smell  is 

"also  mistresse  of  an  Art, 
Which  to  soft  people  sweete  perfumes  doth  sell."6 

Such  a  passage  as  this  on  the  senses  shows  the  curious  mixture  of 
wisdom  and  simplicity  which  marked  the  passing  of  the  old 
learning  into  the  new. 

In  his  allusions  to  facts  in  the  world  of  nature  of  which  EUza- 
bethan  science  was  beginning  to  take  intelligent  cognizance,  Davies 
reflects  another  side  of  the  widening  learning  of  his  time.  His 
list  of  the  things  men  seek  to  know  recalls  the  work  of  geographers 
and  map-makers,  inspired  by  explorations  into  far-off  lands,  and 

»/&«i.,  p.  71.  *  Ibid.,  p.  68. 

•  Ibid.,  p.  73.  » Ibid.,  p.  69. 

•  Ibid.,  p.  66.  •  Ibid.,  p.  67. 


^  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

hints  at  the  labors  of  the  astronomers  of  Italy  who  were  setting 
their  misused  science  free  from  the  chains  of  superstition. 
"  We  seeke  to  know  the  moving  of  each  spheare, 

And  the  strange  cause  of  th'  ebbs  and  floods  of  Nile; 

"  We  .  .  .  acquaint  our  selves  with  every  Zoane 
And  passe  both  Tropikes  and  behold  the  Poles."^ 

Da  vies  does  not,  however,  accept  the  Copernican  theory;   to  him 

the  earth  is  still  the  center  of  the  universe. 

"  The  lights  of  heav'n  (which  are  the  World's  fair  eyes) 
Looke  downe  into  the  World,  the  World  to  see; 
And  as  they  turne,  or  wander  in  the  skies, 
Survey  all  things  that  on  this  Center  bee."^ 

A  beginning  has  been  made  toward  giving  natural  phenomena 
their  correct  explanation,  for,  Davies  tells  us, 

"Sense  thinkes  the  planets,  spheares  not  much  asunder; 

What  tells  us  then  their  distance  is  so  farre? 

Sense  thinks  the  lightning  borne  before  the  thunder; 

What  tells  us  then  they  both  together  are?"' 

Observation  of  the  actual  facts  of  nature  has  not  progressed  far, 
for  the  discovery  of  that  process  as  a  means  to  gaining  knowledge 
was  to  be  Bacon's  contribution  to  learning.  But  hints  of  a 
tendency  of  which  Bacon  was  to  be  the  first  great  exponent  are 
found  in  such  lines  as: 

"As  Spiders  toucht,  seek  their  webs  inmost  part; 
As  bees  in  stormes  unto  their  hives  return."* 

And  the  physical  laws  that  govern  moisture  and  cloud,  rain  and 
river,  are  manifestly  known  in  fair,  correctness  by  the  man  who 
can  write 

"  Water  in  conduit  pipes  can  rise  no  higher 

Than  the  wel-head,  from  whence  it  first  doth  spring:" 

and  a  little  later, 

"  As  the  moysture,  which  the  thirstie  earth 

Suckes  from  the  sea,  to  fill  her  emptie  veines, 
From  out  her  wombe  at  last  doth  take  a  birth, 
And  runs  a  Nymph  along  the  grassie  plaines: 

"  Long  doth  she  stay,  as  loth  to  leave  the  land, 


» Ibid.,  p.  20.  » Ibid.,  p.  36. 

» Ibid.,  p.  24.  *  Ibid.,  p.  22. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  47 

"Yet  Nature  so  her  streames  doth  lead  and  carry, 
As  that  her  course  doth  make  no  finall  stay, 
Till  she  her  selfe  unto  the  Ocean  marry, 
Within  whose  watry  bosome  first  she  lay."^ 

In  the  course  of  his  discussion  of  immortality  occurs  a  passage 
which  especially  shows  Davies'  illumination  of  spirit  in  advance 
of  his  time.  At  a  far  later  date  than  his,  men  of  enlightened 
mind  still  explained  insanity  or  mental  weakness  on  the  ground  of 
witchcraft  or  demon-possession;  as  so  learned  a  physician  as  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  wrote  in  "Religio  Medici, "^ 

"I  hold  that  the  devil  doth  really  possess  some  men,  the 
spirit  of  melancholy  others,  the  spirit  of  delusion  others." 

Mental  disease  was  treated  not  as  sickness  but  as  sin — witness 
the  pseudo-priest's  visit  to  the  pseudo-mad  Malvolio.'  In  the 
midst  of  such  ignorance  and  superstition,  Davies  had  insight  to 
see  that  mental  disorders  were  physical,  not  spiritual : 

"Then  these  defects  in  Senses'  organs  bee, 
Not  in  the  soule  or  in  her  working  might."* 

Though  Davies'  work,  even  in  such  passages,  can  only  vaguely 
point  ahead,  by  the  barest  hints,  to  the  era  of  scientific  knowledge 
that  is  about  to  begin,  he  is,  in  mastery  of  his  artistic  medium, 
the  best  of  proofs  of  the  literary  achievement  of  the  Elizabethan 
age.  His  style  has  the  sincerity  and  directness  that  grew  out  of 
the  sincere  and  direct  character  of  the  times;  his  language  has 
the  force  and  vitality  that  filled  the  actions,  as  the  words,  of  the 
builders  of  England's  greatness.  He  has  emerged  from  the  mists 
of  allegory  and  from  the  icebound  cells  of  casuistic  argument  into 
the  sunshine  and  warmth  of  a  knowledge  based  on  the  realities  of 
human  life. 

For  instance,  as  has  been  seen,  his  analysis  of  the  nature  of  the 
soul  is  scholastic  in  origin;  but  his  presentation  of  the  idea  is 
couched  in  individual  and  vivid  language,  in  a  passage  proving 
the  independent  existence  of  the  soul  by  the  variety  of  things  the 
soul  can  do  independently.^    First,  the  soul  can  reason  by  analogy: 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  8&-86. 

» Ed.  by  John  Peace,  1844,  Part  I,  Sec.  xxx,  p.  63. 

»  Twelfth  Night,  Act  IV,  Sc.  2. 

*  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  p.  102. 

•/bid.,  pp.  30-31. 


48  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

"  She  sorts  things  present  with  things  past, 
And  thereby  things  to  come  doth  oft  foresee." 

It  can  reason  inductively: 

"She  from  sundry  acts,  one  skill  doth  draw, 

Gathering  from  divers  fights  one  art  of  warre, 
From  many  cases  like,  one  rule  of  Law." 

It  can  reason  deductively : 

"  In  th'  effects  she  doth  the  causes  know. 
And  seeing  the  stream,  thinks  wher  the  stream  doth  rise; 
And  seeing  the  branch,  conceives  the  root  below." 

The  soul  is  possessed  of  both  a  reconstructive  and  a  creative 
imagination: 

"She,  without  a  Pegasus,  doth  flie 

Swifter  than  lightning's  fire  from  East  to  West, 
About  the  Center  and  above  the  skie." 

"Without  hands  she  doth  thus  castles  build. 
Sees  without  eyes,  and  without  feet  doth  runne." 

The  soul  has  power  to  plan  action  in  advance : 

"All  her  works  she  formeth  first  within, 
Proportions  them,  and  sees  their  perfect  end. 
Ere  she  in  act  does  anie  part  begin." 

In  these  fresh,  original  stanzas  is  certainly  exemplified  the  art  of 
compressing  into  a  few  apt  words  an  idea  of  magnitude,  the 
vividness  being  the  greater  because  of  the  fewness  and  the  aptness. 
Again,  when  the  poet  answers  the  materialist  who  says  that  the 
soul  originates  in  the  humours  of  the  body,  his  answer  is  the  more 
convincing  because  of  the  direct  simplicity  which  penetrates  the 
subject  like  a  well  pointed  arrow. 

"Why  doth  not  beautie  then  refine  the  wit? 
And  good  complexion  rectify  the  will? 
Why  doth  not  health  bring  wisdom  still  with  it? 
Why  doth  not  sicknesse  make  men  bruitish  still?  "^ 

Abstract  ideas  are  made  graspable  by  concrete  images;   as,  in 
proving  that  the  soul  is  immaterial,  Davies  says, 

"She  is  sent  as  soon  to  China  as  to  Spaine, 

And  thence  returnes,  as  soone  as  shee  is  sent; 
She  measures  with  one  time,  and  with  one  paine, 
An  ell  of  silke,  and  heaven's  wide  spreading  tent."* 

1  Ibid.,  p.  39.  » Ibid.,  p.  45. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  49 

Even  in  connection  with  so  academic  and  theological  a  subject 
as  the  question  whether  God  created  evil,  we  find  a  terse,  modem, 
suggestive  summing  up  of  the  whole  problem  in  homely,  everyday 
language: 

"  Faine  would  we  make  Him  Author  of  the  wine, 
If  for  the  dregs  we  could  some  other  blame."' 

How  much  more  compelling  is  such  a  common  sense  putting  of 
the  case  than  the  ''unprofitable  subtility"  of  argument  of  the 
Schoolmen  who,  as  Bacon  said,  "their  minds  being  shut  up  in  a 
few  authors,  as  their  bodies  were  in  the  cells  of  their  monasteries, 
.  .  .  with  infinite  agitation  of  wit  spun  out  of  a  small  quantity 
of  matter  laborious  webs  of  learning."^  There  lies  a  century  of 
developing  literary  power  between  Davies  and  his  teachers  of 
philosophy. 

Davies  has  profited,  too,  like  all  the  writers  of  this  last  decade 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  by  the  work  of  rhetoricians  and  experi- 
menters with  language  such  as  Lyly  and  Sidney  and  their  lesser 
imitators.  He  is  far  enough  away  from  them  to  avoid  their 
errors,  and  yet  he  finds  ready  to  his  hand  a  literary  medium 
shaped  and  enriched  by  their  labors.  For  instance,  the  wealth 
of  similes  in  Davies  is  reminiscent  of  earlier  as  well  as  contem- 
porary writers.  But  his  similes  are  always  to  the  purpose.  He 
does  not  use  a  figure  for  its  own  sake,  nor  for  futile  rhetorical 
decoration,  but  always  in  order  to  convey  an  idea  difficult  of 
apprehension.  For  example,  the  union  of  the  soul  with  the  body 
causes  the  poet  some  searching  to  find  just  the  right  comparison, 
but  he  finally  lights  upon  a  happy  one : 

"Then  dwels  shee  not  therein  as  in  a  tent, 
Nor  as  a  pilot  in  his  ship  doth  sit ; 
Nor  as  the  spider  in  his  web  is  pent ; 
Nor  as  the  waxe  retaines  the  print  in  it ; 

"  Nor  as  a  vessell  water  doth  contain ; 
Nor  as  one  liquor  in  another  shed ; 
Nor  as  the  heat  doth  in  the  fire  remain ; 
Nor  as  a  voice  throughout  the  ayre  is  spread : 

"But  as  the  faire  and  cheerfull  Morning  light. 

Doth  here  and  there  her  silver  beames  impart."' 

1  Ibid.,  p.  48. 

*  Bacon's  Novum  Organum,  Bohn's  Library,  p.  45. 

*  Grosart's  ed.  of  Davies,  pp.  61-62. 


60  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Again,  the  failure  of  the  world  to  satisfy  the  longings  of  the  soul 
elicits  a  poetic  figure: 

"Then  as  a  bee  which  among  weeds  doth  fall, 

Which  seeme  sweet  flowers,  with  lustre  fresh  and  gay; 
She  lights  on  that,  and  this,  and  tasteth  all, 
But  pleasd  with  none,  doth  rise,  and  soare  away; 

"So,  when  the  Soule  finds  here  no  true  content. 
And,  like  Noah's  dove,  can  no  sure  footing  take; 
She  doth  returne  from  whence  she  first  was  sent. 
And  flies  to  Him  that  first  her  wings  did  make."^ 

Da  vies,  however,  is  sparing  in  his  use  of  figures;  nowhere  does  he 
sacrifice  thought  to  rhetoric.  And  in  his  original  and  unforced 
turns  of  phrase,  when  writing  figuratively,  he  seems  much  more 
akin  to  the  moderns  than  to  his  forerunners,  the  euphuists.  With 
Daniel,  Drayton,  and  Donne,  he  stands  as  exponent  of  the  time 
when  the  experiments  of  the  Areopagus  Club,  together  with  the 
success  of  Spenser  in  practice,  had  borne  fruit  in  a  well-tried 
knowledge  of  the  possibilities  and  limitations  of  Enghsh  verse. 
Through  the  work  of  his  predecessors,  most  of  them  less  happy 
than  he  in  their  literary  output,  the  tool  was  ready  to  his  hand. 

In  his  system  of  philosophy,  then,  in  his  classical  knowledge, 
in  his  interest  in  scientific  inquiry,  in  his  gift  of  adapting  to  his 
own  thought  the  rhetorical  achievement  of  previous  writers, 
Davies  was  representative  of  the  best  learning  of  his  time.  At 
the  same  time  his  treatment  of  his  subject  was  limited  by  con- 
temporary learning,  beyond  which  he  hardly  progressed.  God, 
the  soul,  and  immortality  are  viewed  in  the  light  of  scholastic, 
not  modern  rational  or  ideahstic  philosophy.  The  material  of 
allusion  at  the  poet's  disposal  is  the  classical  material  made 
accessible  by  the  humanists.  His  attention  to  current  scientific 
knowledge  is  alert,  but  his  use  of  scientific  fact  is  as  childlike  and 
rudimentary  as  was  that  of  all  the  predecessors  of  Bacon,  and  his 
view  is  colored,  like  that  of  his  contemporaries,  by  an  orthodox 
religious  and  theological  bias.  His  handling  of  the  tools  of  his 
art  is  no  more  flexible,  graceful,  or  effective  than  that  of  other 
poets  who  profited  by  the  same  wealth  of  experiment  as  he.  The 
learning  of  Davies  is  the  learning  of  his  period.     What  of  Pope? 

As  the  seventeenth  century  advanced,  providing  by  its  progress 

» Ibid.,  p.  87. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  51 

in  learaing  the  background  for  Pope's  knowledge,  the  achievement 
of  the  scholarly  world  was  directed  into  two  main  channels,  the 
philosophical  and  the  scientific,  closely  interrelated  and  interde- 
pendent, and  nearly  akin  in  both  spirit  and  method.  The  philo- 
sophical interest,  now  that  dead  scholasticism  had  given  room  for 
vitalized  and  independent  opinion,  superseded  as  a  subject  for  the 
pioneer  in  thought  the  study  of  the  humanities.  For  the  time 
being  there  was  no  new  cxperunent  to  be  tried  in  the  realm  of  the 
Latin  and  Greek  classics;  but  metaphysics  offered  the  "  fresh 
fields  and  pastures  new"  which  are  ever  the  symbol  of  to-morrow. 
At  the  same  time,  enthusiasm  for  literary  and  artistic  accomplish- 
ment gradually  gave  place  to  enthusiasm  for  scientific  experiment 
and  discoveiy.  Men  began  to  look,  not  into  books,  but  into 
nature  for  their  knowledge.  The  method  of  using  experiment  to 
test  by  induction  an  initial  hypothesis,  begun  by  Galileo^  and 
pursued  with  untiring  zeal  by  Bacon,  had  no  less  influence  upon 
philosophy  than  upon  science.  The  universe  was  full  of  facts  all 
conforming  to  exact  law,  and  the  chief  end  of  the  life  of  the  man  of 
science  was  to  discover  these  laws.  Nature  came  to  be  considered 
as  a  vast  mechanism;  and  the  philosopher,  whose  province  was 
abstract  conclusion  rather  than  concrete  experiment,  turned  his 
effort  to  explaining  hmnan  ideas  and  emotions,  actions  and 
reactions,  as  if  man  were  a  part  of  the  mechanism.  The  laws  of 
nature  were  made  to  stretch  far  enough  to  explain  human  nature, 
even  to  explain  God  himself.^  Thus  the  naturalistic  philosophy 
of  the  seventeenth  centur\'^  grew  logically  out  of  the  inductive 
science  of  Bacon,  both  philosopher  and  scientist.  "The  task  of 
philosophy  in  the  seventeenth  centuiy  was  to  differentiate  itself 
from  theology,  to  assert  the  freedom  of  the  scientific  intellect  from 
the  bondage  of  authority."^ 

As  has  been  said,*  Bolingbroke's  ambition  was  to  conceive  a 
wholly  new  explanation  of  the  world  order  which  should  do  exactly 
that — set  philosophy  free  from  the  authority  of  revealed  reUgion. 
An  aim  so  stated  would  seem  to  discredit  all  the  work  in  that 
direction  of  the  centuiy  preceding  him.  But  a  study  of  the 
"Essay  on  Man"  in  the  light  of  the  work  of  Bacon  and  Hobbes, 

'  Royce,  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  pp.  38-40. 

2  76i<i.,  pp.  28-31. 

'  Seth,  English  Philosophers,  p.  17. 

*  See  page  9. 


52  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Descartes  and  Spinoza,  will  prove  the  new  system  to  be  far  from 
independent  of  the  naturalism  of  the  seventeenth  century  philos- 
ophers. 

Francis  Bacon,  who  determined  the  trend  of  metaphysics  in  the 
fifty  years  after  him,  was  not  himself  a  metaphysician.  His 
concern  was  less  with  abstract  conclusion  than  with  concrete 
fact.  Reason,  instead  of  starting  from  a  general  preconceived 
idea  and  arguing  deductively,  should  start  from  a  hypothesis  and 
argue  inductively,  basing  its  conclusions  on  facts.  Such  a  pro- 
cedure was  too  concrete  and  homely  to  be  scholastic;  it  is  the 
declaration  of  the  independence  of  human  thought  from  bondage 
to  mere  speculation.  At  the  same  time  it  is  neither  idealistic 
nor  imaginative ;  a  philosophy  with  such  a  point  of  departure  will 
be  as  dependent  on  observation  of  nature  as  the  previous  school 
had  been  upon  authority.  But  dependence  on  so  tolerant  an 
overlord  must  have  seemed  to  the  dogma-wearied  thinkers  of 
Bacon's  day  a  bondage  both  free  and  fascinating,  as  with  ardor 
they  turned  to  the  deification  of  nature. 

The  avowed  philosophers,  who  followed  Bacon's  lead  in  making 
from  the  new  science  a  new  philosophy,  did  not  imitate  him  in 
method.  To  Thomas  Hobbes,^  who  represents  all  that  is  deepest 
and  most  penetrating  in  early  seventeenth  century  English 
thought,  deduction  from  mathematical  laws  is  the  method  for 
solving  the  problems  of  the  universe.  But  equally  with  Bacon 
does  Hobbes  glorify  the  facts  of  physical  science  in  his  effort  to 
make  them  account  for  all  mental  phenomena.  For  him  there  is 
no  ideal  or  abstract  reality;  no  concept  or  type  exists  apart  from 
embodiment  in  an  individual.  Philosophy  is  a  reasoned  knowledge 
of  effect  from  cause  and  of  cause  from  effect,  proceeding  on  lines 
as  inevitable  as  the  propositions  of  Euclid;  and  the  final  cause  to 
which  all  events  are  reducible  is  motion.  Even  knowledge  and 
consciousness  are  merely  the  result  of  sensations  which  set  up 
motions  in  the  brain.  Such  a  mechanical  interpretation  of  life 
was  necessarily  far  more  materialistic  than  that  of  Descartes,* 
contemporary  with  Bacon  and  Hobbes,  who  followed,  like  Hobbes, 
the  mathematical  and  deductive  method,  but  who  recognized  the 

*  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  255-262. 
Seth,  English  Philosophers,  pp.  56-78. 

*  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  269-289. 
rvoyce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  pp.  75-77. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  53 

existence  of  abstract  and  universal  intuitions,  from  which  deductive 
reasoning  was  to  proceed  and  which  he  called  innate  ideas.  The 
axioms  of  mathematics  are  merely  examples  of  these  universal 
concepts,  of  which  the  surest  was  the  existence  of  self,  proved  in 
the  famous  cogito,  ergo  sum.  The  truth  of  any  idea  could  be 
tested  by  its  relative  clearness  in  comparison  with  the  self's 
own  existence.  Thus  the  mechanical  view  of  the  world  which 
Descartes  constructs  to  serve  the  purposes  of  science  is  based  on 
the  assumption  of  the  existence  of  mind  in  distinction  from  matter, 
and  leaves  room,  as  Hobbes's  does  not,  for  ideas  not  embodied  in 
individual  material  form,  even  for  the  idea  of  God. 

However  original  and  constructive  Bolingbroke  desired  to  be  in 
organizing  a  new  and  free  world-philosophy,  he  was  the  heir  of  his 
predecessors  in  his  reverential  sense  of  the  all-sufficiency  of  the 
law  of  Nature,  which  the  seventeenth  century  fastened  upon 
philosophical  thought  and  which  remained  dominant  until  its 
climax  in  Rousseau  and  the  Physiocrats.  "Obedience  to  the  law 
of  Nature,"  wrote  St.  John,^  *'is  our  first  duty  and  our  greatest 
interest."  Christianity  itself,  in  its  sincere,  not  its  traditional 
form,  he  proved  to  be  founded  on  the  law  of  Nature.^ 

Like  master,  hke  pupil;  allusions  to  "great  Nature"  sprinkle 
the  pages  of  the  "Essay  on  Man."  It  is  Nature  who  "wakes  her 
genial  power "^  for  man's  happiness;  who  "errs  from  this  gracious 
end  "'  when  earthquakes  and  tempests  destroy  him.  It  is  Nature's 
law  which  the  scientist  unfolds.^  Nature  is  the  mother  of  the 
ruling  passion  in  man;^  her  "vigor  working  at  the  root"  produces 
virtue  from  passion,  giving 

"The  virtue  nearest  to  our  vice  ally'd."* 


»  Works  of  Boliiigbroke,  published  by  Bohn,  1844,  Vol.  IV,  p.  251. 

» lUd.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  396. 

Bolingbroke's  distinction  between  genuine  and  traditional  Christianity  is 
as  follows:  "Genuine  Christianity  is  contained  in  the  gospels;  it  is  the  word 
of  "God.  .  .  .  Traditional  Christianity  ...  is  derived  from  the  writings  of 
fathers  and  doctors  of  the  church,  and  from  the  decrees  of  councils. 
It  is  therefore  the  word  of  men,  and  of  men,  for  the  most  part,  either  very 
weak,  very  mad,  or  very  knavish."     Vol.  IV,  p.  ICM). 

3  Ward's  ed.  of  Pope's  Works,  Epistle  I,  11.  133-144. 

*  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  1.  32. 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  137-14.5. 

•  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  181-196. 


54  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

It  is  Nature  who  checks  man's  tyranny  over  the  weak/  and  who 

works  to  weld 

"the  chain  of  love 
Combining  all  below  and  all  above."^ 

"Cities  were  built"  and  "societies  were  made"  at  the  mandate  of 
"great  Nature."^  "Nature's  light"  is  a  truer  guide  than  "wit's 
false  mirror."^  Nature  is  made  coordinate  with  God  in  linking 
the  frame  of  the  universe.^  And  this  implicit  reverence  for 
Nature's  laws,  obedience  to  which  the  whole  poem  enjoins,  reaches 
its  highest  strain  when  Nature's  laws  are  made  synonymous  with 
God's— 

"The  state  of  Nature  was  the  reign  of  God."^ 

The  "Nature,"  be  it  observed,  about  which  Pope  discoursed  is 
the  abstract  entity  of  his  period  and  the  preceding  one.  It  is  a 
mere  mechanical  force,  working  itself  out  in  cold  and  unchangeable 
laws,  not  a  vital  life  current  making  lovely  the  tree  and  the  stream 
and  the  flower.  Pope  was  Hke  his  time  in  his  worship  of  Nature's 
laws;  but  he  did  not  love  her  fair  works  as  did  earUer  and  later 
poets,  of  the  warmer  EUzabethan  and  Revolutionary'-  periods. 
For  him  there  were  no  "tongues  in  trees."  The  working  of  a 
machine  may  be  awe-inspiring  and  thought-provoking;  but 
neither  the  machine  nor  its  product  thrills  the  beholder  with  love. 
And  to  Pope  as  to  Bolingbroke,  the  universe  was  essentially  a 
machine,  with  Nature  as  its  dynamic  force. 

For,  however  much  in  his  "Essays  on  Human  Knowledge" 
Bolingbroke  may  decry  the  "gross  absurdities"  of  Hobbes,'  he 
has  not  progressed  beyond  Hobbes  in  his  idea  of  the  universe  as  a 
vast  and  perfect  mechanism.  "We  ought,"  he  wrote,  "to  consider 
the  world  we  inhabit  no  otherwise  than  as  a  little  wheel  in  our 
solar  system,  nor  our  solar  system  any  otherwise  than  as  a  little 
but  larger  wheel  in  the  inmiense  machine  of  the  universe."* 
This  same  idea  is  fundamental  to  the  structure  of  the  "Essay  on 
Man."  Though  Pope  nowhere  calls  the  universe  a  machine, 
choosing  rather  the  characteristically  eighteenth  century  word 
system,  yet  the  view  of  creation  presented  in  his  four  epistles  is 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  49-52.  "  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  317-318. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  U.  7-8.  « Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  I.  148. 

'  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  199-202.      '  Bolingbroke's  Works,  Vol.  IV,  p.  119. 
*  Ibid.,  Epistle  rV,  1.  393.  » Ibid.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  336. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  55 

such  a  composite  of  wheels  within  wheels  as  to  admit  of  no  other 
interpretation  than  the  mechanical.  The  whole  scheme  of  things 
is  a  matter  of  "strong  connections,  nice  dependencies,  gradations 
just,"^  held  in  agreement  by  the  "vast  chain  of  being,"  from  which 
no  link  may  be  broken  without  chaos.^  Every  part  of  the  eternal 
order  is  made  to  fit  into  some  other  part,  the  parts  being  mutually 
essential.  In  like  manner,  the  passions  of  man,  with  every  result- 
ing virtue  and  vice,  are  analyzed  in  their  relations  to  each  other, 
in  their  interdependence.  Certain  causes  will  inevitably  give  rise 
to  certain  results.  Self-love  and  Reason  react  upon  each  other  ;^ 
all  good  is  ascribed  to  "their  proper  operation";  all  evil,  to  their 
improper  operation.  Though  each  individual  seems  to  be  seeking 
"a  sev'ral  goal,"'*  from  the  viewpoint  of  Heaven  the  whole,  made 
up  of  interacting  individuals,  is  seen  to  be  one  in  its  working: 

"The  Universal  Cause 
Acts  to  one  end,  but  acts  by  various  laws."* 

The  principle  of  harmonious  interaction  which  balances  the 
passions  within  a  single  individual  is  equally  forceful  in  relating 
to  each  other  the  units  which  make  up  society: 

"From  the  first,  eternal  order  ran, 
And  creature  linked  to  creature,  man  to  man."« 

The  identity  of  man's  love  to  himself  and  to  society  is  Ukened  to 
the  twofold  motion  of  the  planets,  which 

"  On  their  own  axis  .  .  .  run, 
Yet  make  at  once  their  circle  round  the  sun."^ 

The  truly  happy  man  is  he  who 

"Pursues  that  chain  which  links  th'  immense  design, "» 

and  finds  the  "height  of  bliss  but  height  of  charity"  in  close 
contact  with  the  Divine  love,  the  motive  force  of  the  whole  great 
mechanism. 

1  Ward's  ed.  of  Pope's  Works,  Epistle  I,  11.  30-31. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  11.  245-246. 

3  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  U.  53-60. 
<  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  1.  237. 

5  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  U.  1-2. 
» Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  113-114. 
'  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  313-316. 
« Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  U.  327-340. 


56  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

It  is  in  this  inclusion  of  a  God  in  the  order  of  the  universe  that 
Pope  and  Bohngbroke  differ  from  the  materialism  of  Hobbes,  who 
in  his  rejection  of  all  universal  concepts  except  geometrical  axioms 
leaves  but  doubtful  place  for  the  concept  of  God.  Bolingbroke 
and  Pope,  less  agnostic  and  more  akin  in  this  respect  to  Descartes 
and  Spinoza,  cannot  conceive  of  a  machine  without  a  propelling 
power,  nor  of  a  series  of  effects  without  a  gi'eat  first  cause.  But 
Bolingbroke's  God,  who  keeps  the  mechanism  going,  is  not  Hke 
the  God  of  Descartes,  existent  only  as  the  projection  of  the  thought 
of  the  individual.  He  is  a  self-existent  entity,  like  the  God  of 
Spinoza;  yet,  like  Spinoza's  God,  animating  all  nature,  speaking 
"in  the  harmony  of  the  universe."^  Spinoza  is  alluded  to  by 
Bolingbroke  only  to  be  dismissed  as  impious  and  absurd  ;2  and 
this  earliest  of  the  modern  mystics  is  said  to  have  been  unfelt  by 
eighteenth  century  English  thought.  But  there  is  no  little 
similarity  between  Bolingbroke's  scheme  for  explaining  the  whole 
world  order  and  what  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  calls  Spinoza's  "mag- 
nificent attempt  at  an  impossible  symmetry  of  the  universe,"^  in 
a  system  where  God  was  the  only  free  cause,  and  where  all  things 
followed  by  necessity  from  the  infinity  of  that  power  whose  being 
embraced  the  whole  creation.     As  Pope,  well  tutored,  puts  it, 

"All  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  whole, 
Whose  body  Nature  is,  and  God  the  soul; 
That,  chang'd  through  all,  and  yet  in  all  the  same, 
Great  in  the  earth,  as  in  th'  ethereal  frame, 
Warms  in  the  sun,  refreshes  in  the  breeze. 
Glows  in  the  stars,  and  blossoms  in  the  trees, 
Lives  through  all  life,  extends  through  all  extent."* 

J  Collins'  Bolingbroke,  p.  220. 
'  Works  of  Bolingbroke,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  415-416. 
3  Pollock,  Spinoza,  His  Life  and  Philosophy,  p.  168. 
«  Ward's  ed.  of  Pope,  Epistle  I,  11.  267-273. 

It  is  not  easy  to  escape  noting  the  likeness  between  this  passage,  and  the 
famous  lines  in  Wordsworth's  "Tintern  Abbey": 

"Whose  dwelling  is  the  Ught  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  hving  air. 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 
This  is  one  of  the  passages  that  estabhsh  Wordsworth  as  a  Platonist,  an 
idealist,  a  pantheist,  none  of  which  Pope  was! 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  57 

Such  a  passage  is  not  too  far  removed  from  the  idealistic  pantheism 
of  Spinoza,  though  it  lacks  the  passion  and  fire  of  the  Jewish 
mystic  whose  aim  was  not  only  to  find  but  to  love  "a  thing  eternal 
and  infinite."* 

In  any  case,  whatever  speculation  may  arise  along  the  line  of 
the  suggested  query,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  immediate  inspiration 
for  the  idea  of  the  "universal  harmony"  exemphfied  in  Pope's 
"stupendous  whole"  was  derived  from  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper, 
third  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  the  most  brilliant  English  representative 
of  the  seventeenth  century  school  of  thought  that  found  its  God 
in  nature,  and  for  which  Natm-e  was  the  body  and  God  the  soul 
of  the  universe.-  The  parallehsm  between  the  Unes  just  quoted 
and  such  a  passage  as  the  following  is  too  obvious  to  require 
comment.  Says  Shaftesbury ,3  "All  things  in  this  world  are  united. 
For,  as  the  branch  is  united  with  the  tree,  so  is  the  tree  as  immedi- 
ately with  the  earth,  air,  and  water,  which  feed  it.  As  much  as 
the  fertile  mould  is  fitted  to  the  tree,  ...  so  much  are  the  very 
leaves,  the  seeds,  and  fruits  of  these  trees  fitted  to  the  various 
animals,  these  again  to  one  another,  and  to  the  elements  where 
they  live.  .  .  .  Thus,  in  contemplating  all  on  earth,  we  must  of 
necessity  view  All  in  One,  as  holding  to  one  common  stock.  Thus, 
too,  is  the  system  of  the  bigger  world.  See  there  the  mutual 
dependency  of  things! — the  relation  of  one  to  another;  of  the  sun 
to  this  inhabited  earth,  and  of  the  earth  and  other  planets  to  the 
sun! — the  order,  union,  and  coherence  of  the  Whole!  .  .  .  Now, 
having  recognized  this  uniform  consistent  fabric,  and  owned  the 
Universal  System,  we  must  of  consequence  acknowledge  a  Uni- 
versal Mind." 

Whether  Pope's  acquaintance  with  Shaftesbury  came  by  way  of 
Bohngbroke  or  by  direct  contact,  certainly  many  portions  of  the 
"Essay"  are  mere  versifications  of  Shaftesbury's  principles. 
For  instance,  we  read  that  the  "chain  of  love"  combines  "all 
below  and  all  above."* 

^  Works  of  Spinoza,  Bohn's  Library,  Vol.  II,  p.  5. 
^  Fowler,  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson,  p.  106. 

Detailed  discussion  of  Shaftesbury's  philosophy  is  deferred  to  the  section 
which  considers  the  deistic  movement. 

3  Shaftesbury,  The  Moralists,  Part  II,  Sec.  4,  p.  287. 
*  Ward's  ed.  of  Pope,  Epistle  III,  11.  7-8,  21-26. 


58  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

"Nothing  is  foreign;  parts  relate  to  whole; 
One  all-extending,  all-preserving  soul 
Connects  each  being,  ... 
nothing  stands  alone." 

That  is  Shaftesbury's  doctrine  of  the  whole,  in  which  every  part 
contributes  to  the  universal  harmony. 

"  Who  finds  not  Providence  all  good  and  wise, 
Alike  in  what  it  gives,  and  what  denies?"^ 

That  is  Shaftesbury's  doctrine  of  the  essential  Tightness  of  aU 
existing  things,  because  derived  from  a  benevolent  source. 

"Even  mean  self-love  becomes,  by  force  divine. 
The  scale  to  measure  others'  wants  by  thine. "^ 

That  is  Shaftesbury's  theory  of  the  derivation  of  social  love  from 
self-love. 

"Vast  chain  of  being!  which  from  God  began, 
Natures  ethereal,  human,  angel,  man. 
Beast,  bird,  fish,  insect"  .  .  .^ 

That  is  Shaftesbury's  faith  in  a  self-existent  God  in  whom  all 
things  five  and  move  and  have  their  being. 

Shaftesbury's  deism  stands  as  the  ultimate  to  which,  in  one 
direction,  the  naturalism  of  the  seventeenth  century  worked 
itself  out.  But  while  the  trend  of  his  thought  is  divergent  from 
that  of  another  school  of  philosophy  against  the  background  of 
which  the  learning  of  the  "Essay"  must  be  viewed,  the  two 
diverging  lines  of  thought  are  not  divorced.  Though  Shaftesbury 
finds  in  nature  an  assurance  to  faith,  while  the  strictly  rationalistic 
school  finds  in  natural  science  a  foundation  only  for  scepticism 
and  materialism,  yet  both  developing  Unes  of  thought  show  the 
motive  force  of  the  worship  of  reason.  But  Shaftesbury  stood  as 
the  farthest  outpost  to  which  his  type  of  philosophy  was  at  that 
period  in  English  thought  to  progress.  In  the  soil  of  the  early 
eighteenth  century  the  purely  rationalistic  type  of  thought 
found  a  more  fertile  growth  than  did  the  philosophy  of  naturalism 
which  was  to  be  brought  back  to  life  in  England  by  the  poets  of 
the  Revolutionary  period. 

Rationalism  had  had  its  origin  in  the  same  educational  move- 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  1, 11.  205-206. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  291-292. 

3  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  11.  237-239. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  59 

ment  as  had  naturalism.  The  growing  interest  in  physical  science 
had  worked  hand  in  hand  with  Protestant  revulsion  against  the 
authority  of  dogma  to  stress  the  importance,  in  arriving  at  real 
truth,  of  the  individual,  independent  human  intellect.  For 
however  intolerant  the  revolting  Protestant  came  to  be,  the  original 
motive  of  Protestantism  was  an  effort  to  set  free  the  individual 
mind  from  outside  authority  in  rehgious  matters.  Churchmen, 
too  much  in  the  habit  of  following  authority  to  know  how  to  do 
without  it,  substituted  for  an  infallible  church  an  infaUible 
revelation  through  an  inspired  book;  but  the  impetus  given  to 
independent  thought  by  the  first  Protestant  revolt  set  real  thinkers 
free  from  all  such  trammels,  and  showed  them  the  human  intellect 
as  the  sole  guide  and  source  of  Ught  in  reaching  a  knowledge  of 
truth.  A  universe  governed  by  natural  laws,  not  managed  by 
an  overruUng  providence,  must  be  grasped  not  by  the  imagination 
which  had  been  adequate  to  the  reUgious  symboUsm,  but  by  the 
reason,  which  alone  could  understand  the  working  of  cause  and 
effect.^  So  metaphysics  was  made  secular  and  brought  into  the 
realm  of  pure  reason,  while  religion  was  left  in  the  realm  of  author- 
ity and  revelation.  As  experiment  was  the  test  of  scientific 
hypothesis,  so  experience,  viewed  in  the  light  of  reason,  became 
the  test  of  truth.  Thus,  because  reason  set  forth  and  explained 
the  laws  of  nature  in  their  physical  implications,  a  philosophy  of 
naturalism  led  inevitably  to  the  rationalistic  attitude  toward  the 
universe  which  belonged  to  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  which  reached  its  culmination  in  the  sceptical, 
critical  mood  of  the  eighteenth  century — "the  hard,  mid-morning 
light  of  bare  understanding.  "^ 

The  "Essay  on  Man,"  however  second-hand  its  doctrine  may 
be,  has  the  distinction  of  being  the  epitome  of  both  these  phases 
of  the  philosophy  of  its  epoch.  For  Bolingbroke,  too  shallow  a 
thinker  to  realize  that  his  attempt  to  reconstruct  metaphysics  on 
a  new  basis  was  but  an  echo  of  the  best  thought  of  one  hundred 
years,  proclaims  the  God  immanent  in  nature  characteristic  of 
the  Shaftesbury  school,  and  at  the  same  tune  claims  not  to  admit 
to  his  philosophy  any  ideas  other  than  those  for  the  proof  of  which 
reason  is  sufficient.     To  him  as  to  Shaftesbury,  neither  one  a  pure 

^  Lecky,  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism. 
^  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  69. 


60  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

rationalist  though  both  claimed  to  be  such,  proof  of  the  existence 
of  God  did  not  transcend  the  powers  of  intellect.  Even  the  moral 
attributes  of  God,  of  which  he  forms  no  concept,  Bolingbroke 
explains  as  merely  "various  apphcations  of  one  eternal  reason."* 
A  rational  view  of  the  universe  is  part  of  the  divine  intention, 
for  "  God  has  given  to  his  human  creatures  the  materials  of  physical 
and  moral  happiness.  He  has  given  them  faculties  and  powers  to 
collect  and  apply  these  materials,  and  to  carry  on  the  work  of 
which  Reason  is  the  architect.  "^  As  for  Pope,  the  use  of  reason 
as  a  source  of  light  is  simply  taken  for  granted  from  the  outset  of 
the  "Essay."  "What  can  we  reason  but  from  what  we  know?"^ 
he  asks,  with  the  implication  that  the  rational  is  the  only  possible 
method  to  pursue  in  a  search  for  truth.  Quite  apart  from  the 
fact  that  the  poem  itself  is  an  example  of  an  intricately  reasoned 
argument,  its  thesis  is  based  upon  the  exaltation  of  reason  into  a 
very  deity — "the  God  within  the  mind."^  Reason  is  the  restrain- 
ing principle  in  human  nature,  counteracting  the  impelling  force 
of  Self-love. 

"Self-love,  the  spring  of  motion,  acts  the  soul; 
Reason's  comparing  balance  rules  the  whole."^ 

Without  Reason,  man  would  "meteor-like,  flame  lawless  through 
the  void."®  The  Passions,  controlled  and  taught  by  Reason, 
express  themselves  in  virtuous  action.^  It  is  Reason  that  observes 
the  laws  of  Nature  and  interprets  them  for  man's  instruction, 
that  he  may  use  them  as  a  basis  for  his  social  system.*  Only 
Reason  can  order  the  chaos  of  the  good  and  ill  in  man's  nature 
with  the  great  fiat  that  divides  light  from  darkness.*  At  one  point 
only  does  Reason  fail,  for  Pope  will  not  attempt  to  run  ahead  of 
his  guide,  who  felt  it  unbecoming  to  analyze  the  attributes  of 
God,'°  though  for  the  proof  of  His  existence  Reason  avails.   Man's 

'  Bolingbroke,  Works,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  286. 

2  Ibid.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  429. 

'  Ward's  ed.  of  Pope,  Epistle  I,  p.  18. 

* /bid.,  Epistle  II,  p.  204. 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  59-60. 

« Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  p.  65. 

'  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  93-122. 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  170-198. 

9  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  203-204. 

i«  Bolingbroke,  Works,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  286. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  61 

erring  intellect  cannot  pry  into  the  secrets  of  the  divine  nature. 
"Presume  not  God  to  scan,"^  says  Pope  to  the  presumptuous  man 
who  essays  to  scale  heav^en. 

But  a  half  centurj-^  before  Bolingbroke  and  Pope  expounded  the 
power  of  human  reason,  other  and  deeper  thinkers  had  been  led  by 
their  enthusiasm  for  nature,  by  their  rationalistic  attitude  to  the 
laws  of  nature,  to  an  especial  attention  to  human  nature,  man 
being  the  most  interesting  of  existing  phenomena.^  "The  proper 
study  of  mankind"  appeared  to  be  himself.  The  topic  was  not 
new.  Two  thousand  years  before  "Nosce  Teipsum"  the  advice 
of  Davies  had  been  given  by  the  wisest  of  the  Greeks.  But  at  the 
end  of  a  century  the  best  thought  of  which  had  been  devoted  to 
the  laws  of  the  physical  universe,  a  certain  newness  attached  to 
the  doctrine  of  that  first  of  modern  thinkers  who  defined  the 
problem  of  philosophy  as  an  investigation  of  the  nature  and 
extent  of  human  knowledge.^  Until  the  power  of  man's  mind 
was  known,  how  was  it  possible  to  take  much  stock  in  the  conclu- 
sions of  that  mind  concerning  the  physical  universe?  John  Locke, 
heir  to  Bacon's  method  of  observation  and  resulting  induction,* 
directed  English  thought  to  the  problems,^  "  How  do  we  come  by 
knowledge?"  and  "Of  what  does  our  limited  human  reason  permit 
us  to  be  sure?"  Thus  from  1690,  when  the  "Essay  on  the  Human 
Understanding"  appeared,  the  glorified  Reason  itself  became  the 
subject  of  sceptical  inquiry,  with  a  view,  in  Locke's  treatment  of 
the  question,  to  destroying  false  pretensions  of  knowledge  and  to 
declaring  just  how  far  real  knowledge  was  possible  and  practical.* 
The  assumed  innate  ideas  of  Descartes  were  shown  to  have  no 
proved  existence.''  All  ideas,  said  Locke,  were  either  by  experience 
and  sensation,  or  by  reflection  upon  experience  and  sensation.* 

»  Ward's  ed.  of  Pope,  Epistle  II,  II.  1-2. 
^  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  32. 
'  Fowler,  John  Locke,  pp.  127-128. 
Seth,  English  Philosophers,  p.  94. 
*Seth,  pp.  3-4. 

*  Roj'ce,  p.  70. 

•  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  339. 
^  Seth,  English  Philosophers,  pp.  95-96. 
Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  79. 
»  Seth,  pp.  98-99. 

Rogers,  pp.  344-345. 


62  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

"These  alone,  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  are  the  windows  by  which 
light  is  let  into  this  dark  room."^ 

So  much  for  the  source  of  knowledge,  which  thus,  in  Locke's 
view,  "seems  to  be  nothing  but  the  perception  of  the  connection 
and  agreement,  or  disagreement  and  repugnancy,  of  any  of  our 
ideas."-  This  agreement  or  disagreement  may  be  perceived 
immediately;  in  that  case  knowledge  is  intuitive,  such  as  the 
knowledge  of  one's  own  existence.  It  may  be  perceived  by  a 
gradual  process  of  analysis  and  comparison;  then  knowledge  is 
demonstrative,  as  is  the  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  God,  which 
may  be  proved  by  our  intuitive  knowledge  of  self  and  the  necessity 
of  a  first  cause  for  the  existence  of  self.  Or  it  may  be  perceived 
by  sensation ;  such  is  the  knowledge  of  material  things.'  Without 
pursuing  further  an  outline  of  Locke's  philosophy,  even  so  cursory 
a  glance  at  it  makes  it  evident  that  here  is  a  new  method  in  meta- 
physics— a  common  sense  method  of  drawing  conclusions  as  to 
the  laws  of  mind  by  observation  of  the  actual  working  of  the 
mind.^  The  mind  becomes  its  own  object,  and  introspective 
philosophy  is  born.  The  facts  of  experienced  mental  processes 
are  substituted,  as  a  foundation  for  a  system,  for  theories  about 
mental  processes.  It  is  the  application  to  metaphysics  of  the 
scientific  inductive  method. 

Had  Bolingbroke  and  Pope  a  place  in  their  universal  harmony 
for  a  human  reason  removed  from  its  godlike  pinnacle  and  sub- 
jected to  a  challenging  analysis  which  tested  its  powers  and 
possibihties  in  the  acid  bath  of  common  sense?  Or  were  they 
content,  hke  all  English  thinkers  before  Locke,  to  take  reason  for 
granted  as  an  infallible  guide  and  solution  of  all  life's  problems? 
Is  the  "Essay"  to  be  classified  only  as  a  crowning  hterary  product 
of  the  period  of  naturahstic,  rationalistic  thought;  or  does  it 
belong  also  to  the  dawning  period  of  empirical,  introspective 
mental  analysis  initiated  by  the  common  sense  of  Locke? 

The  very  title  chosen  by  Bolingbroke  is  an  echo  of  Locke. 
And  the  "Essays  on  Human  knowledge,"  written,  as  their 
author  says,  as  a  task  imposed  upon  him  by  Pope,^  begin  with  a 
proof  of  the  existence  of  God  stated  thus:    "Since  there  must 

^  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding,  Bk.  II,  Ch.  xi,  17. 

*  Ibid.,  Bk.  IV,  Ch.  i,  1,  2. 
'  Rogers,  p.  352. 

*  Fowler,  John  Locke,  pp.  149-150,  196. 

*  Bolingbroke,  Works,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  40. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  63 

have  been  something  from  eternity,  because  there  is  something 
now,  the  eternal  Being  must  be  an  intelligent  being,  because  there 
is  intelligence  now;  and  such  a  Being  must  exist  necessarily, 
whether  tilings  have  always  been  as  they  are,  or  whether  they 
have  been  made  in  time,  because  it  is  no  more  possible  to  conceive 
an  infinite  than  a  finite  progression  of  events  without  a  cause. "^ 
But  this  is  identical  with  Locke's  proof  of  the  existence  of  God: 
"We  know  that  something  exists,  since  we  are  sure  of  our  own 
existence;  and  we  know,  also,  that  something  must  have  existed 
from  eternity,  since  we  are  instinctively  certain  that  bare  nothing 
cannot  produce  any  real  being.  Since  we  possess  powers,  percep- 
tion, knowledge,  all  these  things  must  be  present  in  the  eternal 
reality  from  which  we  spring;  and  we  can  know,  therefore,  that  a 
supremely  powerful,  knowing,  and  intelligent  being  exists."^ 

Again,  stating  his  own  great  question  as  "What  is  the  precise 
notion  we  are  to  entertain  of  the  human  mind?"  Bolingbroke 
confessedly  proceeds  "in  Mr.  Locke's  method  and  with  his  assist- 
ance"^ to  analyze  the  sources  of  ideas  as  sensation  and  reflection 
and  to  classify  ideas  into  simple  and  complex.  His  emphasis,  in 
regard  to  the  kinds  of  knowledge,  is  much  more  than  is  Locke's 
upon  the  sensational  type,  leading  him  to  the  conclusion,  quite  in 
accord  with  his  position  as  heir  of  Shaftesbury  and  the  naturalistic 
school,  that,  since  the  facts  of  nature  are  incontrovertibly  the 
material  for  sensational  knowledge,  "there  is  no  study,  after  that 
of  morahty,  which  deserves  the  application  of  the  human  mind, 
so  much  as  that  of  natural  philosophy,  and  of  the  arts  and  sciences 
which  serve  to  promote  it.  The  will  of  God,  in  the  constitution 
of  our  moral  system,  is  the  object  of  one.  His  infinite  wisdom  and 
power,  manifested  in  the  natural  system  of  the  universe,  are  the 
object  of  the  other."'* 

Though  Bolingbroke's  inquiry  into  the  "nature,  extent,  and 
reality"  of  human  knowledge  led  him  far  afield  into  the  region  of 
the  attack  on  revealed  and  traditional  religion  which  was  the  real 
object  of  his  writings,  its  starting  point  was  certainly  afforded  hira 
by  Locke's  "Essay";  and  his  constant  and  respectful  citation  of 
that  philosopher  offers  marked  contrast  to  his  attitude  toward 

1  IMd.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  67. 

^  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding,  Book  IV,  Ch.  10. 

'  Bolingbroke,  Works,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  72  sq. 

'Ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  101. 


64  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

other  thinkers — toward  Hobbes/  whom  he  quotes  and  disagrees 
with;  toward  Descartes,^  whose  doctrine  he  contests;  toward 
Berkeley,^  whose  idealism  he  dismisses  summarily  as  "incon- 
ceivable"; toward  Shaftesbury,  whose  atmosphere  he  breathes, 
but  whom  he  does  not  quote. 

In  view  of  this  reverence  of  BoUngbroke  for  Locke  it  is  the 
more  remarkable  to  find  in  the  "Essay  on  Man"  no  trace  of 
imitation  by  the  poet-disciple  of  the  parts  of  the  master's  philo- 
sophy which  were  borrowed  from  the  "Essay  on  the  Human 
Understanding."  So  far  as  BoUngbroke  echoes  Shaftesbury, 
Pope  accompanies  him;  discord  is  "harmony  not  understood"; 
"partial  evil"  is  "universal  good";  "true  Self-love  and  Social 
are  the  same";  through  nature  man  "looks  up  to  nature's  God." 
So  far  as  BoUngbroke  stresses  attentive  study  of  the  facts  of 
nature,  Pope  exemplifies  his  principles,  for  his  whole  argument  is 
an  inductive  one  based  on  those  facts.  So  far  as  BoUngbroke 
glorifies  reason,  Pope  rhapsodizes  in  unison.  But  he  offers  no 
proof  of  God,  as  does  BoUngbroke;  the  great  "Universal  Cause" 
is  taken  for  granted,  and  on  that  assumed  existence  the  argument 
of  the  "Essay"  is  based.  Why  trouble  to  prove  what  it  is  not 
necessary  to  doubt?  Nor  does  Pope  undertake  to  analyze  the 
human  mind.  His  attitude  to  reason  is  that  of  worship  rather 
than  chaUenge.  The  source  of  all  Ught  and  leading  is  not  a 
subject  for  analysis  by  the  mind  utterly  dependent  upon  its 
illumination.  So  far  as  Pope's  treatment  of  this  phase  of  his 
subject  is  concerned,  Locke  might  never  have  written. 

Three  possible  explanations  suggest  themselves  for  this  difference 
between  the  prose  and  the  versified  philosophies.  Pope  may 
have  been  less  ready  than  BoUngbroke,  because  of  a  native  con- 
servatism, to  keep  abreast  of  the  most  recent  and  radical  develop- 
ments in  thought;  or,  his  interest  being  didactic  rather  than 
philosophic,  he  may  have  wished  to  include  in  a  poem  vindicating 
the  ways  of  God  no  suggestion  of  a  doubt  either  of  God  or  of  the 
abiUty  of  human  reason  to  vindicate  Him;  or  these  parts  of  the 
subject  may  have  been  destined  for  treatment  in  later  cantos  of  a 
work  that  in  its  conception  was  far  more  extended  than  the 
present  "Essay."  At  aU  events,  the  deduction  is  safe  that,  just 
as  Davies'  philosophy  represented  the  philosophy  previous  to  his 

1  IMd.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  66;  Vol.  IV,  p.  119.        =>  Ilnd.,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  71,  134. 
« Ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  74,  95. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  65 

own  time,  so  Bolingbroke's  system  is  a  mere  compendium  of  the 
thought  of  his  predecessors  and  early  contemporaries,  and  the 
poem  based  on  that  compendium  is  a  reflection  of  the  same  thought, 
cleverly  combining  in  an  artistic  whole  many  of  its  more  or  less 
heterogeneous  elements. 

But  there  were  other  sides  of  current  learning  beside  the  philo- 
sophical; and  in  his  embodiment  of  these  in  his  poetical  epistles 
Pope  may  be  looked  at  independently  of  his  relation  to  BoHng- 
broke.  St.  John  taught  him  his  philosophy;  but  from  many 
another  source  he  may  have  imbibed  the  acquaintance  with 
scientific  progress,  social  and  political  science,  and  literary  develop- 
ment which  forms  a  background  for  the  "Essay." 

As  was  said  previously,  the  philosophical  development  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  trend  of  which  has  been  indicated  in 
outline,  was  an  outgrowth  of  the  awakening  interest  in  the  physical 
universe.  This  awakening  was  the  cause  of  a  movement  destined 
to  be  of  far  more  permanent  value  in  the  story  of  the  progress  of 
learning  than  either  naturalism  or  deism.  The  inductive  study 
of  science  laid  the  foundation  for  practical  rather  than  metaphysical 
knowledge,  and  was  the  first  step  in  a  really  modern  system  of 
education.  If  the  Elizabethan  theater  is  the  great  institution 
left  as  a  legacy  by  the  sixteenth  century,  no  less  an  inheritance 
fell  to  English  learning  in  the  foundation  of  the  Royal  Society, 
the  memorable  contribution  of  the  seventeenth  century  to  the 
growth  of  science.  But  whereas  the  sixteenth  century  outburst 
of  literary  production  was  as  manifold  in  its  form  as  the  versatility 
of  the  typical  playwright  who  was  also  romancer,  sonneteer, 
pamphleteer,  and  critic,  the  rule  for  the  development  of  the  new 
science  seems  to  have  been  "One  thing  at  a  time."  All  that  could 
be  done  with  purely  physical  science  was  done  before  any  intensive 
effort  was  made  to  pursue  other  lines.  "Her balls"  and  "bes- 
tiaries" seemed  to  satisfy  such  botanical  and  zoological  curiosity 
as  the  intelligent  classes  possessed;  chemistry  remained  a  matter 
of  private  experiment  so  obscure  that  Pope  still  confounds  the 
chemist  with  the  alchemist;^  while  geology  was  not  even  thought 
of  as  a  science,  and  a  mid-eighteenth  century  collector  who  made 
a  specialty  of  gathering  fossils  was  laughed  at  by  the  wits  as  an 
absurdity.*     Mathematics  and  astronomy,   magnetism  and  the 

'  "The  starving  chemist  in  his  golden  views."     Ep.  II,  1.  269. 
*  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Literature  and  Society  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  170. 


66  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

mechanical  laws  of  physics  held  the  attention  of  the  scientists 
who  founded  the  Royal  Society  and  who  sought  to  awaken  the 
stagnant  thought  in  the  universities  to  a  new  and  vital  branch  of 
knowledge.  Just  as  new  life  came  into  literature  a  century 
before,  not  from  the  centers  of  learning  but  from  popular  play- 
wrights and  court  poets ;  so  now  the  movement  to  investigate  the 
far  recesses  of  the  universe  and  find  out  the  "why"  of  existing 
physical  phenomena  came,  not  from  the  dons  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  who  still  mulled  over  their  divinity,  their  classics, 
and  their  logic,  but  from  the  practical  thinking  men  who  desired 
a  new  knowledge  sufficient  to  cope  with  new  conditions  of  life. 
The  great  names,  of  course,  are  Gilbert  and  Napier,  Newton  and 
Halley;  but  the  experiments  and  enthusiasm  of  many  less  promi- 
nent persons,  experiments  which  worked  themselves  out  in  such 
instruments  as  the  thermometer,  the  barometer,  and  the  pendulum 
clock,  helped  to  make  physical  science  popular  with  commoner 
as  with  student — witness  the  patient  Mrs.  Pepys,  learning  the 
multiplication  table  for  the  pastime  of  her  indefatigable  husband.^ 
The  great  master  of  the  period,  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  did  his 
epoch-marking  work  upon  the  laws  of  motion  as  exemplified  in 
the  solar  system.  To  him  evei'ything  in  nature  was  rationally 
explainable  by  law.  It  is  not  surprising,  with  motion  and  law  as 
the  keywords  of  the  dominant  thought  movement  of  the  period, 
to  find  philosophers  reducing  all  existence  to  motion  or  to  mathe- 
matical formulas,  and  theologians  referring  dogma  to  the  laws  of 
reason.  Not  only  Bolingbroke's  conversation  must  have  shown 
the  influence  of  the  work  of  inductive  physical  scientists,  but  the 
thought  and  the  talk  of  all  Pope's  circle  of  wits  must  have  been 
conversant  with  such  topics.  It  was  the  scientific  jargon  of  the 
day  that  crept  into  Pope's  verbiage,  with  its  recurrent  figures  of 
systems  and  chains  and  circles.  And  particularly  the  revelations 
of  astronomy  caught  his  poetic  imagination,  with  the  vision  of 
"vast  immensity"  where  "worlds  on  worlds  compose  one  uni- 
verse," where  "system  into  system  runs."  The  poet  runs  ahead 
of  the  physicist,  to  speculate  upon 

"  What  other  planets  circle  other  suns. 
What  varied  being  peoples  eveiy  star."^ 

'  Schuster  and  Shipley,  Heritage  oj  Science,  p.  227. 
2  Ward's  edition  of  Pope's  W<yrks,  Epistle  I,  11.  24-27. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  67 

No  longer  is  man  tlie  center  of  the  universe,  as  in  the  pre-Coperni- 
can  view  of  Davies.  Such  an  assumption  is  ridiculed  as  an 
absurdity. 

"Man,  who  here  seems  principal  alone, 
Perhaps  acts  second  to  some  sphere  unknown, 
Touches  some  wheel,  or  verges  to  some  goal."* 

Pope's  view  of  the  achievement  and  the  limitation  of  Newton 
is  apparent  in  his  summarj^  of  the  work  of  the  seventeenth  century 
scientist : 

"Go,  measure  earth,  weigh  air,  and  state  the  tides; 
Instruct  the  planets  in  what  orbs  to  run, 
Correct  old  Time,  and  regulate  the  eun,"^ 

and  in  his  query  whether  the  "mortal  man"  who  could  "unfold 
all  Nature's  law"  and  bind  with  his  rules  the  rapid  comet  could 
"describe  or  fix  one  movement"  of  the  human  mind.^  The  same 
unawareness  of  Locke's  analysis  of  the  understanding  that  appears 
in  Pope's  attitude  to  the  sacredness  of  reason  is  implicit  here; 
what  the  great  scientist  cannot  do  Pope  knows,  but  what  the  great 
philosopher  has  done  he  does  not  know. 

A  great  deal  of  general  scientific  information  is  evident  in 
allusions  to  the  atomic  theory — 

"The  single  atomsyeach  to  other  tend; 
Attract,  attracted  to,  the  next  in  place 
Formed  and  impell'd  its  neighbor  to  embrace." 

to  the  relativity  and  indestructibility  of  matter: 

"  All  forms  that  perish  other  forms  supply, 
Like  bubbles  on  the  sea  of  Matter  borne. 
They  rise,  they  break,  and  to  that  sea  return."* 

and  to  the  dual  motion  of  the  planets — 

"On  their  own  axis  as  the  planets  run. 
Yet  make  at  once  their  circle  round  the  sun."* 

Such  nowadays  self-evident  physical  truths  seem  as  unnecessary 
of  mention  as  the  facts  about  the  five  senses  upon  which  Davies 
spent  so  many  lines.  But  the  mention  of  them  shows  that  to 
Pope  they  were  not  yet  too  obvious  to  be  marveled  at  and  talked 
about  as  of  paramount  interest.     The  fact  that  at  the  same  time 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  11.  57-59.  *  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  10-2a. 

'  Jhid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  20-22.  » Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  313-314. 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  35-36. 


68  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

he  belittles  rather  than  glorifies  the  work  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  is 
evidence,  however,  that  to  him  scientific  achievement  was  but 
incidental,  as  compared  with  the  philosophical  exploration  on 
which  he  was  embarking  with  his  guide,  philosopher  and  friend. 
Whether  for  criticism,  for  satire,  or  for  analysis.  Pope's  "proper 
study,"  when  he  followed  his  own  bent,  was  human  nature. 

The  scholarly-incUned  man  of  the  eighteenth  century,  if  he 
depended  solely  on  the  universities  for  inspiration,  could  learn 
little  but  the  classics.  The  Oxford  and  Cambridge  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  followed  rather  than  led  along 
the  trails  of  thought.^  Science  was  a  subject  of  the  curriculum 
only  in  so  far  as  mathematics  was  studied  in  appUcation  to  astron- 
omy, mechanics,  and  physics.  Chemistry  was  a  mere  experiment 
in  a  private  laboratory;  biology  and  geology  were  unknown; 
zoology  was  merely  descriptive,  often  by  hearsay,  and  botany  was 
hardly  pursued  apart  from  its  relation  to  gardening.  Geography 
belonged  only  to  the  schools  of  navigation,  while  history  as  a 
subject  for  study  in  the  modern  sense  was  reserved  for  nineteenth 
century  discovery.  Individual  scholars,  in  the  university  and 
out  of  it,  did  pioneer  work  in  all  these  lines.  But  Pope  was  not 
a  university  man  nor  a  scholar,  nor  had  he  the  spirit  of  a  pioneer. 
His  very  knowledge  of  the  classics  was  an  unacademic  one;  and 
in  the  allusions  to  subjects  geographical,  historical,  zoological, 
and  botanical  that  are  frequent  in  his  pages  he  must  be  representa- 
tive of  the  intelUgent  and  independent  thinker  of  the  period,  who 
by  desultory  reading  and  by  the  club  and  coffee-house  type  of 
conversation  amassed  a  large  and  fairly  accurate  stock  of  general 
information. 

Pope's  knowledge  of  history,  of  plant  and  animal  Ufe,  even  of 
the  habits  of  the  famous  "poor  Indian"  is  such  as  he  might  have 
picked  up  in  casual  readings  of  PHny,  of  the  Elizabethan  herbalists, 
of  Ray2  and  Willoughby,^  and  in  hearing  the  talk  of  travellers 
returning  from  far  off  lands.  It  is  hearsay  knowledge  that  speaks 
in  reference  to  the  "headlong  Honess,"^  hunting  by  ear  rather  than 
by  nostril,   to  the   "half  reas'ning  elephant,"^  to  the  "stork, 

'  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature,  Vol.  IX,  p.  425  sq. 

»  John  Ray,  History  of  Plants,  1686-88. 

»  Francis  Willoughby,  Ornithology,  1676;  History  of  Fishes,  1686. 

*  Ward's  edition  of  Pope's  Works,  Epistle  I,  1.  213. 

s /6id.,  Epistle  I,  1.221. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  69 

Columbiis-likc,"  who  explores  "heav'ns  not  his  own,"'  and  to  the 
"little  nautilus"  who  can  teach  man 

"to  sail, 
Spread  the  thin  oar,  and  catch  the  driving  gale."* 

Such  other  facts  from  the  world  of  living,  growing  nature  as  Pope 
mentions  could  have  come  under  his  eye  in  his  own  prized  garden 
at  Twickenham,  where  the  grape  and  the  rose  renewed 

"The  juice  nectareous  and  the  balmy  dew";> 

where  "  the  nice  bee"  extracted  the  "healing  dew"  from  "pois'nous 
herbs" ;^  where  he  could  watch  "the  wanton  fawn,"  the  lark, 
the  linnet,  the  jay  and  the  hawk;  and  where  the  spider  designed 
his  parallels  "without  rule  or  line."^  His  historical  allusions,  too, 
are  chiefly  to  facts  and  characters  upon  whom  he  chanced  in  his 
voluminous  reading  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  authors,  and  familiar- 
ity with  whom  he  presupposed  in  his  readers.  Borgia  and  Catiline, 
Alexander  and  Caesar,  Nero  and  Titus,  or  even  the  more  modern 
names  of  Turenne  and  Sidney,  Charles  XII  and  Pi'ince  Eugene — 
such  references  imply  no  special  interest  in  historical  research, 
nor  are  they  cited  in  any  but  the  traditional  light  in  which  the 
eighteenth  century  regarded  them.  Pope's  strength  lay,  not  in 
his  learning,  but  in  his  wit;  his  learning,  superficial  and  made 
up  of  bits  snatched  here  and  there  from  a  wide  field,  was  but 
that  of  the  average  reader  of  his  time,  of  whose  general  knowledge, 
we  may  venture  to  suppose,  the  "Essay"  affords  a  fair  example. 
In  one  direction,  however.  Pope  showed  himseK  familiar  with 
and  deeply  interested  in  what  was  a  progressive  step  toward  a 
new  subject  for  study.  From  Hobbes  onward,  thinkers  had  been 
concerning  themselves  with  the  construction  of  a  theory  of  the 
state.  The  rise  of  the  great  powers,  making  necessary  a  philosophy 
to  explain  their  existence,  produced,  during  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  the  new  type  of  political  philosophy  which 
was  the  direct  ancestor  of  the  modern  science  of  poHtical  economy. 
The  angle  from  which  the  early  seventeenth  century  writers 
approached  the  subject  showed  that  economic  questions  were 
beginning  to  hold  an  important  place  as  a  subject  of  discussion, 
though  as  yet  they  did  not  comprise  a  separate  branch  of  political 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  103-106.  *  lUd.,  Epistle  I,  11.  219-220. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  177-178.  'Ibid.,  Fpistle  III,  11.  103-106. 

3  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  11.  135-136. 


70  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

philosophy.^  Thus  Grotius,  the  Dutch  contemporary  of  Hobbes,' 
treated  of  the  relations  of  states  to  each  other,  of  the  laws  governing 
property,  and  of  the  effects  of  commerce  on  international  relations. 
Hobbes,^  more  interested  in  internal  politics,  because  of  his 
desire  to  defend  the  divine  right  of  the  Stuarts,  discussed  the 
economic  motives  underlying  the  institution  of  society.  Harring- 
ton drew  in  his  "Oceana"*  a  picture  of  the  ideal  state,  differing 
from  the  "Republic"  and  the  "Utopia"  in  that  its  government 
and  politics  are  based  on  economic  power — a  new  idea  in  political 
philosophy.  Mandeville,^  shocking  the  moralists  of  his  day  by 
the  selfish  egoism  to  which  he  reduced  all  human  motives,  attempt- 
ed a  solution  of  the  problems  of  demand  and  supply,  necessity  and 
luxury,  labor  and  wage;  and  by  arousing  eager  champions  of  an 
opposite  opinion  led  the  way  to  the  foundation  of  an  orthodox 
economic  system.^  Locke,  though  more  interested  in  ethics  and 
metaphysics  than  in  politics,  none  the  less^  took  time  to  develop 
a  social  philosophy  in  defense  of  his  eager  belief  in  democracy, 
and  promulgated  the  new  "doctrine  of  natural  right,"  by  which 
property  rights  grew  out  of  labor  expended. 

The  central  idea  in  all  these  early  experiments  at  economic 
theory  was  the  doctrine  of  the  social  contract  on  which  society 
was  founded.  According  to  them  all,  the  state  began  in  a  mutual 
agreement  for  the  observance  of  certain  laws  as  a  basis  of  mutual 
welfare.  The  idea  was  not  new  in  modern  philosophy.  "Epi- 
cureanism attributed  the  origin  of  the  state  to  a  deUberate  conven- 
tion made  for  natural  protection  and  security."*  But  later 
thinkers  had  followed  Plato  and  Aristotle  rather  than  Epicurus; 
so  that  the  contract  theory  propounded  by  Grotius  was  the  equiva- 
lent of  an  original  contribution  to  thought. 

Two  radically  opposite  interpretations  of  the  social  contract 
are  represented  by  seventeenth  century  thinkers.  Grotius 
inclined  to  the  benevolent  construction  of  human  nature,  claiming 

'  Bonar,  Philosophy  and  Political  Economy,  pp.  84-5. 

*  Laws  of  War  and  Peace,  1625. 

*  De  Cive,  1642;  Leviathan,  1651. 

*  Commonwealth  of  Oceana,  1658. 
»  Fable  of  the  Bees,  1714-23. 

*  Seth,  English  Philosophers,  p.  188. 

^  Treatise  on  Civil  Government,  1690. 

'  Bonar,  Philosophy  and  Political  Economy,  p.  49. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  71 

that  the  agreement  for  mutual  welfare  grows  out  of  man's  natural 
love  for  ordered  companionship.^  Rational  beings  by  their 
inherent  qualities  follow  the  just  way,  and  their  innate  regard  for 
society  is  the  source  of  all  binding  laws.  The  same  position  is 
held  by  Locke,  in  his  declaration  that  government  exists  by 
compact,  for  the  good  of  the  governed,  and  that  the  compact 
grows  out  of  obedience  to  the  law  of  nature,  which  wills  the  peace 
and  preservation  of  all  raen.^  So  much  for  the  altruistic  side  in 
this  early  controversy.  The  egoistic  current  was  set  in  motion 
by  Hobbes,  whose  belief  was  in  a  contract  founded  on  individual 
selfishness,  the  natural  basic  motive  in  all  men.  The  first  law  of 
nature  is  self-preservation^  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  In  the 
state  of  nature  selfishness  rules  unrestrained,  giving  rise  to  con- 
ditions so  intolerable  that  sheer  self-interest  compels  men  to 
agree  on  some  mutual  scheme  by  which,  in  serving  the  interests 
of  all,  each  individual  will  get  the  most  possible  for  himself.* 
Men  are  "anti-social  by  nature,  and  social  only  by  a  happy 
invention  of  far-sighted  selfishness."*  The  same  egoistic  inter- 
pretation of  the  contract  is  evident  ip.  Mandeville,  whose  bees 
serve  themselves  in  serving  the  hive.  In  his  solution  of  the 
labor  and  wage  problem,  everything  that  creates  demand  is 
good — extravagance,  vice,  and  luxurj'  as  well  as  necessity  give 
rise  to  industry  and  art.  Therefore  the  more  selfish  and  unbridled 
in  desire  a  man  is,  the  better  is  his  service  to  the  welfare  of  the 
whole.*  Shaftesburv  and  his  disciple  Hutcheson,  shocked  at  a 
doctrine  so  dangerous  in  its  practical  bearing  on  life,  went  to  an 
extreme  along  the  opposite  line,  in  their  declaration  that  man  is 
naturally  social  and  benevolent,  that  moral  law  is  absolute  and 
consistent  with  natural  law,  and  that  on  this  law  society  is  based.'^ 
In  that  portion  of  the  "Essay"  where  Pope  discusses  man  in 
his  relation  to  society,  it  is  not  hard  to  trace  the  influence  of  these 
schools  of  thought,  echoes  of  whose  combat  reached  him  through 
the  conversation  of  Bolingbroke  if  they  did  not  do  so  through  the 

^  Ibid.,  p.  72. 

*  Locke,  Civil  Governvient,  Book  II,  Chap,  ii,  Sec.  4-14,  74-76,  124-131. 
» Bonar,  pp.  78-79. 

*  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  258-259. 

*  Bonar,  p.  85. 

8  Patten,  Development  of  English  Thought,  pp.  204-212. 
'  Seth,  English  Philosophers,  pp.  188-192. 


72  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

pages  of  the  philosophers  themselves.  It  is  distinctly  the  contract 
idea  that  has  compelled  his  interest,  to  the  exclusion  of  other 
economic  problems.  His  omissions  are  perhaps  as  significant  of 
the  philosophical  calibre  of  Pope's  mind  as  are  his  inclusions. 
He  does  not  touch  upon  or  allude  to  the  questions  of  trade,  finance, 
property,  taxation,  increase  of  population,  or  popular  education, 
topics  which  had  engaged  the  attention  of  Hobbes  and  Harrington 
a  century  before  him,  in  the  period  when  "pohtical  economy  was 
growing  up  in  England  as  an  application  of  political  philosophy."^ 
He  suggests  no  rules  for  the  machinery  of  government  such  as  the 
"Oceana"  outlines.  He  ignores  Mandeville's  theories  regarding 
luxury  as  economically  right  though  ethically  wrong,  and  poverty 
and  ignorance  as  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  a  laboring, 
wage-earning  class  to  do  the  work  of  the  nation.  It  was  the 
theoretic  rather  than  the  practical  side  of  political  philosophy 
that  commanded  the  interest  of  Pope  and  his  circle.  Economic 
realities  were  very  far  removed  from  the  experience  of  an  aristo- 
cratic dilettante  like  Bohngbroke,  of  a  shrewd  and  caustic  analyst 
of  the  vices  of  court,  church,  and  society  like  Swift,  or  even  of  a 
keenly  observant  but  sheltered-living  poet  and  critic  like  Pope 
himself.  The  fashions,  the  intrigues  of  court,  the  adventures  of 
Belinda,  the  gossip  of  literary  circles,  a  contest  of  wits  with  Lady 
Mary,  the  opening  of  a  new  vista  among  his  garden  walks;  in 
his  more  scholarly  moments  the  deeds  of  Hector  or  Achilles, 
and  in  his  tenderer  hours  solicitude  for  his  mother — these  were 
Pope's  reahties. 

This  detached  and  academic  acquaintance  with  political  philos- 
ophy may  account  for  the  confusion  which  appears  in  Pope's 
explanation  of  the  origin  of  social  laws.  He  does  not  seem  to  have 
in  mind  a  clear  distinction  between  egoistic  and  altruistic  doctrine. 
It  is  not  compromise  that  makes  him  veer  from  one  side  to  the 
other;  for  usually,  once  Pope  knew  his  intended  direction,  he 
did  not  trim  his  sails  to  suit  the  wind.  Here,  however,  he  seems 
to  have  no  firm  conviction  of  what  his  position  is.  Perhaps  in 
this  portion  of  the  work  he  was  less  directly  under  the  tutelage  of 
his  "guide,  philosopher,  and  friend";  and,  according  to  Leshe 
Stephen,  he  was  himself  incapable  of  sustained  reasoning  or 
laborious  and  patient  meditation,  and  could  work  well  only  on 

^  Bonar,  p.  85. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  73 

lines  provided  for  him.*  It  is  not  unfair,  however,  to  charge  some 
of  the  confusion  to  Bolingbroke,  who  was  himself  but  a  superficial 
thinker  and  to  whose  pages  can  certainly  be  traced  Pope's  ideas 
on  the  state  of  Nature,  and  on  the  origins  of  poUtical  and  civil 
society,  of  government,  and  of  religion.^ 

A  study  of  Epistle  III  will  show  not  only  what  were  Pope's 
independent  and  second-hand  views  of  the  social  contract,  but 
also  the  confusion  that  is  apparent  in  his  presentation  of  them. 
For  the  most  part  his  interpretation  of  the  contract  inclines  to  the 
benevolent  view.  The  world  of  nature  is  proof  sufficient  that  the 
chain  "combining  all  below  and  all  above"  is  a  chain  of  love, 

"See  plastic  Nature  working  to  this  end: 
The  single  atoms  each  to  other  tend ; 
Attract,  attracted  to,  the  next  in  place 
Form'd  and  impell'd  its  neighbor  to  embrace. 
See  matter  next  with  various  life  endu'd, 
Press  to  one  centre  still,  the  gen'ral  good."^ 

The  individual  exists  for  the  good  of  the  whole: 

"short  of  reason  he  must  fall. 
Who  thinks  all  made  for  one,  not  one  for  all."* 

Such  a  statement  is  diametrically  opposed  to  Hobbes,  who  thus, 
according  to  Pope,  falls  short  of  reason.  No  happiness  is  possible 
unless  men  live  in  social  relation  with  each  other,  for  God,  in 
framing  the  whole, 

"On  mutual  wants  built  mutual  happiness."' 

A  picture  of  a  Golden  Age  known  as  the  "state  of  Nature"  shows 
how  instinctive  is  the  social  feeling,  not  only  of  human,  but  of 
animal  kinds,  beginning  in  the  love  of  the  mate  and  of  the  young.^ 
Universal  benevolence  reigned  when  man  followed  these  natural 
social  instincts. 

"Pride  then  was  not;  nor  arts,  that  pride  to  aid; 
Man  walk'd  with  beast  joint-tenant  of  the  shade; 
The  same  his  table,  and  the  same  his  bed; 
No  murder  cloth'd  him,  and  no  murder  fed. 

*  Leslie  Stephen,  Alexander  Pope,  p.  162, 

*  Churton  Collins,  Bolingbroke,  p.  192,  note. 

'  Ward's  edition  of  Pope's  Works,  Epistle  III,  11.  7-14. 

*  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  47-48. 
» /?«:<i.,  Epistle  III,  1.  112. 

« Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  113-150. 


74  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

In  the  same  temple,  the  resounding  wood, 

All  vocal  beings  hyuin'd  their  equal  God; 

The  shrine  with  gore  unstain'd,  with  gold  undrest, 

Unbrib'd,  unbloody,  stood  the  blameless  priest."^ 

Like  the  wise  man  of  long  ago,  Nature  pointed  man  to  the  ant  as  a 
pattern.  Man  learned  his  first  lessons  in  self-preservation  by- 
observation  of  the  animal  creation,  and  thence  too  derived  a 
pattern  of  a  social  union  or  contract. 

"Learn  each  small  people's  genius,  policies. 
The  ants'  republic,  and  the  realm  of  bees: 
How  those  in  common  all  their  wealth  bestow, 
And  anarchy  without  confusion  know; 
And  these  forever,  though  a  monarch  reign, 
Their  sep'rate  cells  and  properties  maintain."^ 

Natural  laws  have  been  the  foundation  of  civil  laws,  which  yet 
have  never  achieved  the  perfection  of  their  model. 

"  In  vain  thy  reason  finer  webs  shall  draw, 
Entangle  Justice  in  her  net  of  law. 
And  right,  too  rigid,  harden  into  wrong."* 

Commercial  relations  followed  poUtical  ones;  worship  of  the 
"Father  of  all"  grew  from  devotion  to  the  head  of  the  clan  or 
tribe,  who  became  to  them  the  pattern  of  their  self-created  God, 
as  they, 

"looking  up  from  sire  to  sire,  explor'd 
One  great  first  Father,  and  that  first  ador'd."* 

The  picture  of  this  ideal  state  of  Nature  is  both  unhistoric  and 
unscientific;  historical  method  was  unknown,  and  Darwin  and 
Spencer  were  unborn.  Yet  the  account  of  the  development  of  the 
state  and  the  church  from  the  primitive  family  is  quite  like  Locke's 
view,  who  presents  the  family  as  the  original  unit  of  society, 
acquiring  and  adapting  its  own  customs,  and  joining  with  other 
famiUes  and  tribes  in  a  choice  of  a  form  of  government,  and  in  an 
agreement  with  one  another  to  obey  and  maintain  that  form.^ 
However,  tr}--  as  he  will  to  be  truly  philosophical,  untheological,  if 
possible  heretical.  Pope  cannot  conceal  his  native  orthodoxy  and 
his  tendency  to  be  influenced  by  tradition.     Behind  the  verbiage 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  151-158.  *  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  215-228. 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  171-190.  «  Fowler,  John  Locke,  pp.  185-186. 

'  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  U.  191-194* 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  75 

of  a  rationalistic  philosoplier  is  recognizable  the  lingering  belief  in 
a  Garden  of  Eden  and  a  Fall  of  Man. 

So  far  Pope  has  run  true  to  form  in  adherence  to  Locke,  Shaftes- 
bury, and  the  other  believers  in  goodwill  as  the  motive  of  the 
social  contract.  But  there  is  more  to  be  said  about  the  matter. 
A  philosopher  writing  a  comprehensive  poetical  discussion  of  so 
large  a  question  must  omit  nothing  that  he  has  heard  on  the  sub- 
ject. So  there  follows  a  metrical  summary  of  the  egoistic  philo- 
sophy'- of  Hobbes — that  all  exist  for  one,  and  that  the  individual 
works  for  the  whole  only  because  thus  he  best  helps  himself. 

"The  same  self-love,  in  all,  becomes  the  cause 
Of  what  restrains  him,  government  and  laws. 

His  safety  must  his  liberty  restrain : 
All  join  to  guard  what  each  desires  to  gain. 
Forc'd  into  virtue  thus,  by  self-defence, 
Ev'n  kings  learn'd  justice  and  benevolence: 
Self-love  forsook  the  path  it  first  pursu'd. 
And  found  the  private  in  the  pubHc  good."^ 

Was  such  an  inconsistency  the  result  of  befogged  thinking  or  was 
it  deliberate?  An  effort  to  run  a  safe  middle  course  between  the 
two  extremes  of  thought  is  indicated  by  the  last  lines  of  the 
Epistle: 

"  Thus  God  and  Nature  Unk'd  the  gen'ral  frame, 
And  bade  Self-love  and  Social  be  the  same."" 

Both  motives,  says  our  poet-philosopher,  exist;  both  work  to  the 
same  end;  therefore  neither  shall  be  preferred  above  the  other  as 
an  ultimate  cause  of  action.  This  compromise  conclusion  is 
identical  with  that  of  Shaftesbury,  who  argues  that  both  self-love 
and  social  love  are  virtuous  and  necessary,  if  maintained  in  proper 
balance  and  proportion.^  Butler,  too,  in  his  "Sermons,"  and  in  his 
"Dissertation  on  the  Nature  of  Virtue,"*  attempts  the  same 
reconciliation  of  the  two  contradictory  theories  of  human  motive. 
But  both  these  writers  analyze  their  subject  at  length,  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  their  conclusion  seem,  whether  acceptable  or  not, 
at  least  well-reasoned  and  consistent.     Pope's  hurried  appending 

»  Ward's  edition  of  Pope's  Works,  Epistle  III,  U.  271-282. 
»  Ward,  Pope's  Works,  Epistle  III,  11.  317-318. 

*  Characteristics,  Book  II,  Part  i,  Sec.  3. 

♦  Seth.  p.  200. 


76  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

of  it  after  a  full  presentation  of  both  the  altruistic  and  the  egoistic 
doctrines  makes  it  seem  either  his  own  ineffective  attempt  to 
make  an  agreement  between  the  conflicting  systems  which  he 
has  outlined;  or,  what  is  more  likely,  an  effort  to  summarize  his 
reading  of  Shaftesbury  and  Butler  and  thus  to  include  in  his 
"Essay"  all  that  any  English  philosopher  had  contributed  to  the 
discussion. 

Such  a  passage  is  excellent  proof  that  Pope  was  not  an  inde- 
pendent thinker.  It  takes  straight  thinking  to  copy  inteUigently 
another  man's  work,  and  phenomenally  straight  thinking  to 
patch  together  into  a  harmonious  whole  parts  copied  from  several 
men's  work.  The  betrayal  of  one's  own  failure  as  a  thinker 
appears  in  any  confusion  with  one  another  of  the  parts  being 
copied,  or  any  failure  of  the  parts  to  coalesce  into  a  unity.  An 
echo  is  clear  when  it  answers  only  a  single  voice;  let  voices  multi- 
ply, and  the  echo  vanishes  in  complexity  of  sound.  In  philosophy 
Pope's  poem  is  an  echo,  sometimes  clear,  sometimes  clouded. 

Moreover,  the  independent  thinker  of  the  times,  in  the  very 
years  when  BoHngbroke  and  Pope  were  working  out  their  second- 
hand system,  was  thinking  his  way  through  to  a  very  different 
conclusion  from  the  fallaciously  optimistic  one  of  the  "Essay." 
For  Hume,  a  straight  road  led  from  Locke's  challenge  of  the 
human  understanding  to  the  sceptic's  refusal  to  accept  that 
challenge.  Such  was  the  path  of  original  reflection.  In  Pope's 
willingness  to  accept  as  final  the  conclusions  of  philosophers  before 
him,  discovering  no  implications  or  suggestions  in  those  conclu- 
sions, appears  another  proof  that  he  was  born  to  follow,  not  to 
lead.     The  pioneer  is  never  satisfied. 

As  Davies  was  typical  of  style  in  art  at  the  end  of  a  period  of 
developing  artistic  consciousness  and  experiment  with  art  forms, 
so  Pope,  too,  was  typical  of  the  literature  of  his  period.  The 
century  of  lyric  and  dramatic  outpouring  was  over;  no  longer  was 
beauty  the  idol  of  writers  and  readers,  but  common  sense  was  the 
object  of  worship.  Meaning  and  content,  not  form  of  expression, 
were  important  in  literature  as  in  life.  Writers  wrote  not  to 
amuse  and  please  but  to  teach  and  criticize.  Cleverness  had 
taken  the  place  of  grace;  didacticism  the  place  of  emotion.  An 
art  form  convenient  for  the  conveyance  of  thought  had  been 
devised,  and,  content  with  the  heroic  couplet,  the  poet  said  what- 
ever he  had  to  say  in  that  medium,  without  effort  for  variety  or 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  77 

innovation.  It  was  the  substance  that  mattered;  why  expend 
energy  in  making  new  verse  forms  when  so  good  a  one  was  ready 
at  hand?  Only  let  the  couplets  be  as  witty  and  polished  as  the 
conversation  of  the  clever  men  and  women  who  comprised  the 
reading  public. 

In  its  presentation  of  philosophical  learning,  then,  Pope's 
"Essay"  only  follows,  often  afar  off  and  uncertainly,  the  principles 
evolved  by  the  thinkers  of  his  day.  As  an  index  of  literary  develop- 
ment it  shows  the  current  indifference  to  art  for  art's  sake,  placidly 
employing  the  vehicle  of  all  poets  of  the  day.  And  in  relation  to 
other  than  philosophical  learning,  it  is  but  a  reflex  of  the  writer's 
time,  showing  all  the  Hmitations  and  patchinesses  of  the  education 
of  contemporary  leaders  of  thought.  Pope  is,  indeed,  less  a 
representative  of  the  best  learning  of  his  time  than  is  Davies;  he 
was  less  scholarly,  less  independent  in  following  a  line  of  thought 
of  his  own,  less  awake  to  all  phases  of  developing  knowledge. 
Above  all,  Pope  was  working  under  patronage  and  direction,  as 
Davies  was  not.  Both  poets,  however,  since  neither  is  more  than 
abreast  of  his  time,  afford  corroboration  of  the  idea  that  the 
philosopher  in  verse  is  an  exponent  of  current  learning  rather 
than  a  pioneer  into  new  realms. 

Before  applying  the  same  test  to  Tennyson,  a  survey  of  the 
educational  progress  of  the  intervening  centurj'^  must  show  how 
full  of  change  was  this  period,  for  thought  and  knowledge  as  well 
as  for  politics  and  industry.  The  conventionality  and  formality 
of  the  intellectual  life  of  the  cultured  classes  in  the  middle  decades 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  together  with  the  rise  to  influence  in 
politics  and  society  of  the  uncultured  middle  class,  produced  an 
intellectual  indifference  and  stagnation  as  clearlj^  apparent  in  the 
devotion  of  literary  men  to  the  hack  work  that  suppHed  wealthy 
tradesmen  and  manufacturers  with  the  useful  information  that 
they  mistook  for  education,^  as  it  was  in  the  classical  deadness  of 
the  life  of  the  universities.  RationaUsm  had  crushed  the  life  out 
of  both  theological  and  metaphysical  thinking  quite  as  effectually, 
in  spite  of  its  proud  casting  off  of  traditional  chains,  as  scholasti- 
cism had  done  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  rebirth  of  thought  and 
knowledge  came  to  England  in  the  fifteenth  century  through  the 
study  of  classic  hterature  and  through  artistic  effort.    The  channels 

'  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Literature  and  Society,  p.  147,  aq. 


78  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

through  which  new  hfe  flowed  into  the  reason-dulled  mind  of 
England  in  the  late  eighteenth  century  were  four:  the  philo- 
sophical channel  of  German  idealism;  the  scientific  channel  of 
geological  and  biological  investigation;  the  economic  channel 
leading  from  Hume's  materiahstic  scepticism,  the  impasse  with 
which  metaphysics  found  itself  confronted,  into  utilitarianism 
and  consequent  interest  in  the  problems  of  political  economy  and 
social  relationships,  viewed  not  theoretically  but  in  the  light  of 
the  newly  kindled  torch  of  history;  and  the  literary  channel, 
whereby  poetry  became  not  didactic  but  aesthetic,  not  moral  but 
emotional,  not  pedantic  but  simple. 

The  name  of  Hume  is  noteworthy  in  this  story  of  intellectual 
change  because  with  three  of  these  tendencies  his  work  was 
connected.  By  a  thorough-going  empiricism  he  reached  the 
conclusion  that  any  absolute  knowledge,  outside  the  range  of 
sense  impressions,  was  impossible.^  The  extreme  scepticism  in 
which  his  philosophy  terminated,  and  which  was  the  end  of  the 
chapter  of  English  metaphysical  speculation  for  almost  a  hundred 
years,  afforded  a  point  of  departure  for  Kant,  in  the  effort  to 
refute  it.-  So,  although  modern  idealism  was  not  in  its  tran- 
scendental form  native  to  England,  it  was  an  English  thinker  who 
set  its  processes  in  motion.  Again,  in  his  ethical  contention  that 
the  test  of  conduct  is  its  effect  in  happiness,^  Hume  was  the 
forerunner  of  the  English  utilitarians;  and  in  his  interest  in 
human  nature,  not  analytically  nor  abstractly,  but  as  seen  in  the 
everyday  activities  of  life,^  and  in  his  treatment  of  morality  not  as 
ethical  but  as  social  in  its  motives,  he  was  the  ancestor  of  the 
early  social  scientists.  Third,  he  was  the  first  of  English  philos- 
ophers to  observe  that  man  as  an  individual  or  in  his  social 
relationships  can  be  understood  only  in  the  light  of  his  past;  and 
with  a  sense  of  the  value  of  history  to  turn  from  the  discouraging 
sceptical  philosophy  which  he  had  worked  out  and  win  fame  for 
himself  as  one  of  the  three  first  modern  English  historians.^ 

It  is  to  repeat  a  platitude  to  say  that  the  German  idealists 

1  Seth,  English  Philosophers,  pp.  152-153. 

'  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modem  Philosophy,  pp.  126-127. 

»  Bonar,  Philosophy  and  Political  Economy,  pp.  108-109. 

Hume,  Essays,  Vol.  II,  p.  176. 

*  Patten,  Development  of  English  Thought,  p.  214. 

*  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Literature  and  Society,  p.  184. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  79 

shaped  the  thought  of  England  in  the  early  nineteenth  century; 
and  it  is  wellnigh  an  impertinence  to  sum  up  the  essential  features 
of  so  well  known  a  philosophy,  as  nevertheless  must  be  done  for 
purposes  of  convenient  comparison  with  the  third  of  our  poet- 
philosophers.  Four  distinct  tendencies  are  apparent  in  the 
thought  of  the  group  of  German  thinkers  who,  between  1750  and 
1850,  transformed  philosophy  from  a  cold  and  rational  system  to 
the  living,  pulsing,  inspiring  interpretation  of  hfe  that  the  earlier 
German  Spinoza  had  conceived  and  that  the  later  German  Nietz- 
sche, blinded  by  a  less  spiritual  but  more  dazzling  vision,  aban- 
doned. The  first  and  best  known  of  these  is  the  movement 
identified  with  the  name  of  Emanuel  Kant^  and  called  loosely  and 
variously  transcendentahsm  and  subjective  idealism. 

For  Kant  there  was  no  objective  world;  his  world,  nay,  his 
universe  was  self-created,  the  projection  of  his  own  individuality. 
"All  knowledge  begins  with  experience,"^  and  within  the  realms 
of  experience  human  reason  is  sufficient  for  knowledge.  But 
knowledge  is  not  limited  to  experience,  as  Hume  had  said;  and 
for  the  transcendent  realities,  such  as  God,  the  soul,  freedom, 
immortahty,  which  lie  outside  the  range  of  sense  impressions, 
the  reason  cannot  avail  as  a  solvent.  Yet  though  God  is  unprov- 
able. He  is  not  unknowable.  In  order  to  a  comprehension  of  the 
world  and  one's  self,  a  venture  of  faith,  Uke  a  leap  in  the  dark, 
must  postulate  an  ultimate  unconditioned  reality,^  hypothetically 
the  basis  of  all  finite  things — the  reality  which  men  call  God. 
Without  such  a  postulate  a  world  order  is  inconceivable;  for 
Kant's  world  order  is  based  on  the  moral  law;  and,  without  a 
source  from  which  to  emanate,  a  moral  law  is  unthinkable.  "Will 
to  act  as  if  God  were  present  and  existent"  is  the  command  by 
obedience  to  which  man  creates  a  moral  order  in  the  world  and  in 
his  own  soul  a  belief  in  God. 

Reduced  to  its  lowest  terms,  the  philosophy  apparently  so 
abstruse  and  so  involved  becomes  merely  a  kind  of  glorified 
common  sense.  Since  the  world  is  self-created,  why  not  create, 
by  our  will  to  believe,  those  great  realities  which  make  possible 
a  sane  and  well-ordered  life  in  our  self-world?     Beheve  that  God 

» 1724-1804.     Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  published  1781. 

2  Immanuel  KanCs  Werke,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  17,  Kellermann  edition. 

'  Rogers,  History  o/  Philosophy,  p.  440. 


80  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

exists,  and  for  you  He  will  exist.  Vitalize  your  belief  and  His 
existence  by  acting  as  if  the  belief  were  established  truth.  And 
finally,  since  happiness  and  virtue  cannot  be  attained  in  this  life, 
and  such  foreseen  failure  makes  all  effort  futile,  postulate  an  eternal 
life^  in  which  all  things  shall  be  ours.  "Truth  comes  to  us,"  says 
Kant,  "because  we  make  it."* 

So  there  blows  through  the  fogs  and  mists  of  the  analytical 
ponderings  of  the  eighteenth  century  rationalists  a  breath  of  vital 
air  from  the  hills  from  whence  strength  cometh — an  air  the  motive 
current  of  which  is  the  sense  of  the  heroic  power  and  value  of 
man's  will.  The  reason,  which  has  been  deified  as  the  most 
godlike  element  in  man,  is  dethroned,  is  itself  laid  bare  to  criticism. 
In  its  place  rules  the  human  will,  creating  by  its  determined  effort 
of  faith  those  transcendent  realities  by  belief  in  which  alone  can 
life  be  made  anything  but  futile. 

Fichte^  carried  the  idealism  of  Kant  a  step  farther.  In  his 
philosophy,  all  knowledge  was  dependent  on  action.  The  moral 
will  is  the  only  true  reality,  and  an  exemplification  of  morality  is 
impossible  apart  from  action.  We  know  because  we  are  compelled 
by  moral  necessity  to  act,  and  thus  the  active  self  creates  the 
universe.  The  world  is  non-existent  except  as  an  object  and  a 
sphere  of  duties* — "the  stuff  for  our  duty,  made  manifest  to  our 
senses."^  In  asserting  itself  in  action  the  self  exists,  and  at  the 
same  time  embodies  the  one  true  and  infinite  Reason,  the  will  of 
God,  which  can  only  work  itself  out,  manifest  itself,  and  so  find 
existence,  through  the  wills  of  men.®  Thus  God,  too,  creates 
Himself,  and  is  at  the  same  time  man-created  and  subjective. 
As  Professor  Royce  puts  it,  "God  is  the  pulse  of  the  moral  order, 
the  hfe  of  lives,  the  eternal  spiritual  self-creator,  the  live  and 
organic  unity  of  all  beings."'' 

For  the  reader  who  is  not  a  trained  metaphysician,  the  essentials 
of  this  idealistic  philosophy  reduce  themselves,  for  all  practical 
purposes,  to  three  colossal  but  simple  tenets:  The  world  of  sense 

1  Ibid.,  p.  448. 

*  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  117. 
» 1762-1814;  first  published  work,  1792. 

*  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  453-454. 
'  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  152. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  153.     Cf .  John  XV. 
» Ibid.,  p.  160. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  81 

impressions  is  but  a  show  world,  a  shadow  of  the  inner  life  which 
by  its  thinking  creates  the  shadow  picture;  the  real  universe  is 
spiritual,  with  the  moral  law  as  its  center;  and  man  arri\es  at 
knowledge  of  these  spiritual  reaUties  by  a  moral  activity  which 
postulates  the  existence  of  a  God  from  whom  the  moral  impetus 
emanates. 

From  the  first  of  these  tenets  developed  what,  to  quote  Professor 
Royce  once  more,  has  been  called  the  "kaleidoscopic  philosophy"^ 
of  the  romantic  period,  the  second  tendency  in  the  German  thought 
of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Out  of  our  own  personality 
we  create  the  world?  Very  well!  Let  us  create  it  after  the  pattern 
of  our  dream.  Not  by  the  sternness  of  a  categorical  imperative 
shall  we  arrive  at  a  belief  in  God,  but  by  a  sympathetic  emotion 
which  feels  rather  than  thinks  a  universe  into  being.  God  is  the 
great  artist,  the  great  dreamer,  the  great  sympathizer.  The  man 
whose  dream  is  most  godlike,  whose  emotion  most  shares  the  divine 
sympathy,  he  it  is  who  creates  the  best  world.^  In  SchlegeP  the 
philosophy  is  one  of  fickleness;  "the  truth  best  known  to  me," 
he  writes,  "is  that  erelong  my  present  truth  will  change."*  To 
know  truth  is  to  experience  all  moods,  all  emotions.  In  SchelUng* 
it  is  a  nature  philosophy,  partaking  of  a  mystical  pantheism  not 
unhke  Spinoza's.  God  is  the  animating  spirit  of  nature,  the 
motion  and  the  spirit 

"that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

Throughout  the  world  of  nature  the  great  spirit  struggles  onward 
to  his  own  highest  manifestation,  which  is  man.* 

This  is  romanticism,  not  science.  Yet  it  is  not  hard  to  trace 
the  kinship  of  the  idea  implicit  here,  that  man  is  the  highest 
phase  of  a  progressive  development  extending  through  all  nature, 
with  the  scientifically  supported  evolutionary  philosophy  that 
appears  as  the  third  tendency  in  modern  German  thought,  working 
itself  out  first  in  relation  to  religion  and  second  in  relation  to 
history.  Lessing,  much  earlier  than  this,  had  founded  modern 
religious  philosophy  in  his  discovery  of  the  evolutional  character 

I  Ibid.,  p.  173.  *  Royce,  p.  176. 

« Ibid.,  pp.  173-174.  '  1775-1854. 

'  1772-1829.  •  Royce,  p.  185. 


82  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

of  religion.*  Throughout  the  ages  God  has  been  teaching  man. 
Any  form  of  religion  is  but  one  stage  in  this  process  of  divine 
education.  Religion  is  a  progressive  revelation  of  eternal  truth; 
in  its  progressiveness  lies  its  vitality,  and,  indeed,  its  charm  for 
the  man  who  wrote  that,  offered  his  choice  between  truth  and  a 
search  for  truth,  he  would  choose  the  search. 

Lessing  said  religion  must  be  studied  historically.  Schelling 
extended  the  "growth"  idea  to  the  world  of  nature.  HegeP 
went  further  in  his  philosophical  expression  of  the  new  historical 
sense.  Not  only  men  and  things  but  God  Himself  are  illuminated 
by  the  study  of  the  gradual  development  of  history.'  Hegel  did 
not  call  this  growth  by  the  name  evolution;  but  the  evolutionary 
idea  implicit  in  his  philosophy  of  history  was  appropriated  from 
the  realm  of  science,  where  Laplace  and  Lamarck  had  lately 
established  it,  and  extended  to  the  realm  of  spirit,  so  that  at  the 
great  idealist's  hands  it  became  "a  constituent  element  in  German 
habits  of  thought."^  The  subject  of  evolutionary  theory  in 
England  belongs  more  properly  to  the  discussion  of  the  progress 
of  science,  for  in  spite  of  Spencer's  claims  to  have  anticipated 
Darwin,  it  was  as  science  and  not  as  philosophy  that  the  doctrine 
came  to  England.  It  is  mentioned  here  only  as  a  necessary 
background  for  the  understanding  of  Hegel's  contribution  to 
modern  philosophy.  According  to  his  theory  of  development, 
then,  personality  is  a  chain  of  selves,  even  as  hfe  is  a  chain  of 
experience,  whether  individual  or  social.^  No  conclusions  are  to 
be  drawn  by  abstract  reason,  for  reason  is  concrete,  existing  only 
in  the  phenomena  of  experience,  and  making  conclusions  only  on 
the  basis  of  experience.  Nor  is  there  any  isolated  phenomenon, 
nor  any  individual  hfe  living  out  of  relation  to  other  hves.  Man 
exists  only  in  relation  to  other  men;  "no  man  liveth  to  himself."^ 
As  history  is  the  story  of  the  struggle  between  the  uncontrolled 
natural  will  and  the  gradually  victorious  spiritual  principle,  so 
the  story  of  the  individual  life  is  a  record  of  struggle,  in  which 
alone  lies  personal  existence.     Virtue  consists  not  in  accomplish- 

*  Lindsay,  Studies  in  European  Philosophy,  Chapter  XIV. 
2 1770-1831. 

'  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  470-479,  457-458. 

*  Schurman,  Ethical  Import  of  Darwinism,  p.  50,  sq. 
^  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  206. 

« Ibid.,  p.  208. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  83 

ment  but  in  the  effort  to  be  virtuous.  It  is  through  struggle  that 
the  self  is  ennobled.  "Conflict  and  active  mastery  continually 
enlarge  our  finite  selves."^  And  the  infinite  self,  called  God,  is 
that  whose  existence  is  complete  because  it  has  made  full  conquest 
of  the  contradictions  of  life.^ 

So  positive  a  philosophy  as  Hegel's  was  bound  to  arouse  protest.^ 
One  was  the  protest  of  the  intuitive  mind,  refusing  to  find  the 
solution  for  all  mysteries  in  the  experience  of  the  world  of  sense. 
One  was  the  protest  of  the  agnostic,  asserting  the  insufficiency  of 
empirical  knowledge  to  prove  infinite  realities,  about  the  existence 
of  which,  therefore,  doubt  must  cling.  The  third  was  the  protest 
of  the  pessimist,  whose  revolt  against  Hegel  marks  the  last  phase 
of  German  philosophy  prior  to  1850.  Schopenhauer,*  embittered, 
gloomy,  despairing,  nevertheless  bases  his  hopeless  reading  of  life 
on  the  wholesome  and  virile  system  of  Kant.*  His  world,  like 
Kant's,  is  but  a  projection  of  the  self;  it  lives  only  as  an  illusion. 
The  great  reality  is  not,  as  for  Hegel,  to  be  found  in  experience. 
It  is  a  thing-in-itself,  existing  back  of  the  shadow  world  which  is 
all  man  can  know,  except  as  in  a  thorough  understanding  of  his 
own  nature  he  grasps  reality.  The  essential  quality  in  his  own 
nature  he  will  find  to  be  the  will,  the  expression  of  which  in  action 
is  man's  primary  impulse. 

So  far  Schopenhauer  follows  Kant.  But  in  this  will  to  believe 
and  to  do  Kant  found  joy  and  power.  Schopenhauer  sees  the 
will,  individual  or  universal,  to  be  a  thing  capricious,  restless, 
unsatisfied.  The  will  to  do  springs  from  desire,  and  desire  implies 
lack  or  suffering.  Unless  we  will  we  do  not  exist;  and  if  we  will 
we  suffer.  The  vision  of  joy  in  defeat,  frustration,  sacrifice,  was 
not  for  Schopenhauer.  With  such  a  conception  of  life,  of  what 
good  is  existence?  "The  world,"  says  Royce,  "is  an  evil  dream," 
the  only  way  to  end  which  is  to  deny  the  will  that  dreams,  and  so, 
in  ceasing  to  exist  by  ceasing  to  will,  to  find  peace.*  It  is  this 
tragic  interpretation  of  life,  spelling  existence  in  letters  of  desire, 
seeing  no  other  motive  for  the  exercise  of  the  will  than  that  of  the 

J  Ibid.,  p.  214. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  216. 
'  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  483. 

*  1788-1860.     The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,  published  1819. 
'  Rogers,  p.  487. 

♦  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  258. 


84  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

demand  for  something  unattainable,  that  brings  us  to  the  mid- 
century  and  the  date  of  the  completion  of  "In  Memoriam." 

Philosophy  since  Locke,  even  since  Hume,  has  come  a  long 
way.  No  longer  does  it  measure  and  weigh  and  analyze  and 
syllogize.  No  longer  is  speculation  a  matter  of  nicely  calculated 
propositions  with  their  proofs,  or  of  mathematical  problems  with 
their  solutions.  Cold  logic  underUes  these  later  writings,  to  be 
sure ;  exposed  to  rational  test,  they  would  come  through  unscathed. 
But  the  fabric  woven  upon  the  warp  of  barren  metaphysics  is 
colorful,  warm,  pulsing  with  Ufe.  There  is  joy  in  it,  or  pain; 
aspiration,  or  despair;  an  enthusiastic  groping  after  the  stars,  or 
a  descent  into  hell.  The  new  philosopher  is  both  man  and  artist, 
in  his  intensity  of  feeling,  in  his  vivid  portrayal  upon  the  canvas 
of  infinity  of  his  own  shadow-world.  He  is  not  hampered  by 
the  Umitations  of  reason;  his  vision  is  of  the  unseen,  the  tran- 
scendent, the  eternal,  surpassing  reason.  Whether  the  vision 
appears  to  him  as  aflSrmation  or  as  negation,  the  No  or  the  Yes  is 
everlasting. 

The  poetic  philosophy  of  Tennyson,  put  beside  that  of  Pope, 
shows  the  same  difference  in  content  and  spirit  as  the  contrast 
between  Shaftesbury,  let  us  say,  and  Fichte,  or  between  Locke  and 
Kant,  or  even  between  Hume  and  Schopenhauer.  In  Davies  the 
practical  man  of  affairs  speaks  more  loudly  than  the  philosopher; 
in  Pope  the  would-be  philosopher  out-voices  the  man,  though  not 
the  artist;  in  Tennyson  the  poet  is  first  man,  then  artist,  and  last 
of  all  philosopher.  Moreover,  while  Davies  and  Pope  consciously 
set  to  work  to  summarize  existing  systems  of  philosophy,  "In 
Memoriam"  shows  such  existing  systems  only  implicitly.  Tenny- 
son was  not  interested  in  recasting  into  verse  the  thoughts  of 
other  men,  nor  was  he  writing  a  didactic  essay.  He  was  recording 
in  an  inspirational  poem  his  own  emotions,  his  own  reflections 
springing  from  experience  and  emotion.  If  his  self-expression 
used  the  idiom  of  current  philosophy,  it  was  hardly  with  intention. 
That  philosophy  was  famiUar  enough  to  him^  to  have  become  a 
natural  part  of  his  thought  processes. 

1  The  Memoir  tells  us,  Vol.  I,  pp.  43-44,  that  Tennyson  was  a  member  of 
the  "Apostles'  Club"  at  Cambridge,  who  "read  their  Hobbes,  Locke,  Berke- 
ley, Butler,  Hume,  Bentham,  Descartes,  and  Kant,"  and  discussed  meta- 
physical questions.  This  interest  continued  to  a  date  later  than  1850,  when, 
we  are  told,  "he  took  to  reading  different  systems  of  philosophy,"  and  had  in 
his  library  "Spinoza,  Berkeley,  Kant,  Schlegel,  Fichte,  Hegel."    Vol.  I,  p.  308. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  85 

It  is  a  matter  of  but  a  moment  to  find  in  "In  Memoriam" 
traces  of  the  philosophy  in  which  reality  transcends  the  powers  of 
reason.  Such  a  transcendentalism  is  the  keynote  of  the  whole 
poem,  from  its  initiation  with 

"  Believing  where  we  cannot  prove,"* 

to  its  conclusion  with  the  resolve  to  "trust, 

"With  faith  that  comes  of  self-control. 
The  truths  that  never  can  be  proved."* 

With  the  idealists  Tennyson  feels  that  "knowledge  is  of  things  we 
see,"^  and  that  the  unseen  is  beyond  knowledge,  though  not 
beyond  perception.    Knowledge 

"is  earthly  of  the  mind, 
But  Wisdom  heavenly  of  the  soul."^ 

For  Tennyson  as  for  the  German  philosophers,  the  road^to  this 
wisdom  is  the  road  of  the  moral  will  expressed  in  action.  "Our 
wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  thine  "^  identifies  existence  with  the 
effort  to  attain  to  harmony  with  the  infinite  will  which  Hegel 
called  God.    Man's  best  claim  to  immortality  is  that  he  is  one 

"Who  loved,  who  suffer'd  countless  ills, 
Who  battled  for  the  True,  the  Just."« 

The  beauty  of  Hallam's  life  is  once  summarized  as  consisting  in  the 
determined  virtue  of  action  by  which  he  arrived  at  faith  in_^the 
unseen : 

"Perplext  in  faith,  but  pure  in  deeds, 
At  last  he  beat  his  music  out."^ 

Very  existence  lies  in  activity  and  exertion  of  the  will  to  do : 

"How  much  of  act  at  human  hands 
The  sense  of  human  will  demands 
By  which  we  dare  to  live  or  die."* 

And  if  there  were  no  other  hint  of  Tennyson's  belief  in  the  philos- 

*  In  Memoriam,  Prelude,  1.  4.  '  Ibid.,  Prelude,  1.  16. 
« Ibid.,  Canto  CXXXI.  *  IMd.,  Canto  LVI. 

'  Ibid.,  Prelude,  1.  22.  '  lUd.,  Canto  XCVI. 

*  Ibid.,  Canto  CXIV.  « Ibid.,  Canto  LXXXV. 


86  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

ophy  of  the  categorical  imperative,  it  is  unmistakably  stated  in 
the  thrilling  last  canto : 

"  O  living  will  that  shalt  endure 

When  all  that  seems  shall  suffer  shock, 
Rise  in  the  spiritual  rock. 
Flow  thro'  our  deeds  and  make  them  pure."^ 

In  reading  Pope,  who  presented  what  claimed  to  be  a  complete 
and  ordered  philosophical  system,  one  looked  with  justice  for 
consistency,  and  failed  to  find  it,  because  Pope  was  copying  the 
work  of  other  men.  To  seek  for  consistency  in  ''In  Memoriam" 
would  be  equally  disappointing,  but  not  equally  just.  All  that  is 
said  here  is  Tennyson's  own;  his  reading  has  been  assimilated  to 
his  own  thought,  and,  for  human  influence,  it  is  through  memory 
and  love  alone  that  his  "guide,  philosopher  and  friend"  inspires 
him.  But  that  of  his  own  which  he  expresses  is  not  a  metaphysical 
system;  it  is  a  succession  of  moods.  Moods  are  not  consistent; 
unstable,  variant,  shifting,  they  show  now  sunlight,  now  shadow; 
they  reflect  in  one  hour  determination,  in  the  next,  vacillation. 
So  Tennyson  on  one  page  asserts  firmly  his  Kantian  faith  in  the 
"living  will"  as  the  one  enduring  reahty,  and  on  another  page 
veers  to  the  romantic  position,  declaring  with  equal  eloquence 
that  reality  is  to  be  found  through  feeUng.  Such  a  passage  is  the 
deeply  emotional  one-  where,  falling  with  his  weight  of  cares 

"  Upon  the  great  world's  altar-stairs 
That  slope  thro'  darkness  up  to  God," 

he  cries  out,  in  a  blind  faith  based  on  feeling, 

"  I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope, 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all. 
And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope." 

Andfinfat  least  one  famous  canto'  he  has  shown  that  the  final 
answer  of  intuitive  faith  to  scepticism  must  be  the  answer  of  the 
mystic,  in  terms  of  emotion : 

"  If  e'er  when  faith  had  fallen  asleep, 
I  heard  a  voice,  'believe  no  more,' 
And  heard  an  ever-breaking  shore 
That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep, 

» Ilnd.,  Canto  CXXXI.  »  /Wd.,  Canto  CXXIV. 

•  Ibid.,  Canto  LV. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  87 

"  A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 
And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answer'd,  *I  have  felt.'" 

In  one  respect  Tennyson  was  caught  at  more  than  momentary 
moods  in  the  current  of  the  romantic  philosophy,  especially  in  the 
form  characteristic  of  its  leader  Friedrich  Schelling.  Like  the 
poets  of  the  Revolutionary  period,  he  is  filled  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  unity,  the  kinship,  between  man  and  nature,  between 
nature  and  God,  between  man  and  God,  a  unity  so  perfect  that  the 
whole  universe  becomes,  not  the  machine  of  the  eighteenth  century 
physicist,  but  a  great  vital  organism.  Not  in  specific  passages 
does  the  feeling  of  Tennyson  for  nature  appear  so  much  as  in  the 
spirit  of  the  whole  poem.  It  is  the  work  of  a  man  sympathetic 
with  the  world  out  of  doors,  who  finds  a  return  of  sympathy  from 
that  world.  Gazing  at  the  gloom  of  the  yew,  symbol  of  the  gloom 
in  his  own  soul,  he  seems  to  "grow  incorporate"  into  the  sullen 
tree.^  The  voice  of  Nature  sounds  but  as  a  "hollow  echo"  of  the 
voice  of  Sorrow .2  A  hushed  autumn  day,  with  chestnuts  "patter- 
ing to  the  ground"  and  "leaves  that  redden  to  the  fall"  brings 
to  him  a  transient  calm,  the  calm  of  despair;*  and  when  "the 
winds  begin  to  rise"  and  "the  last  red  leaf  is  whirl'd  away,"  the 
tumult  of  the  storm  makes  harmony  with  the  "wild  unrest"  of 
his  soul.*  It  is  "when  sundown  skirts  the  moor"  that  the  spectres 
of  doubt  arise.*  The  anniversary  of  Hallam's  death  rises  dim, 
howling, 

"issuing  out  of  night. 
With  blasts  that  blow  the  poplar  white. 
And  lash  with  storm  the  streaming  pane."* 

When  spring  delays,  he  longs  for  its  coming: 

"  Can  trouble  live  with  April  days. 
Or  sadness  in  the  summer  moons?  "^ 

As  the  poem  records  the  gradual  allaying  of  grief,  the  passages 
descriptive  of  nature  grow  less  shadowed,  less  stormy.  Beyond 
the  "gorgeous  gloom  of  evening,"  from 

"yonder  orient  star 
A  hundred  spirits  whisper  'peace.'"* 

» Ihid.,  Canto  II.  •  Itrid.,  Canto  XLI. 

» Ihid.,  Canto  III.  •  Itrid.,  Canto  LXXII. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  XI.  '  Ibid.,  Canto  LXXXIII. 

*  Ibid.,  Canto  XV.  » Ibid.,  Canto  LXXXVI. 


88  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

The  song  of  a  wild  bird,  whose  "passion  clasps  a  secret  joy"  even 
"in  the  midmost  heart  of  grief,"  echoes  the  music  of  his  own 
harp,  the  strings  of  which  pass  beyond  his  control.  When  he 
"would  prelude  woe, 

"  The  glory  of  the  sum  of  things 
Will  flash  along  the  chord,"^ 

and  the  vision  of  a  wondrous  universe,  manifest  in 

"  the  songs,  the  stirring  air, 
The  life  re-orient  out  of  dust" 

in  "sweet  April"  changes  despair  to  regret  and  regret  to  hope. 
The  beauties  of  a  fresh,  green  English  spring 

"Cry  thro'  the  sense  to  hearten  trust 
In  that  which  made  the  world  so  fair."^ 

Finally,  setting  bond  and  seal  upon  the  kinship  between  the  poet 
and  the  stuff  of  his  poesy,  comes  the  conviction  that  the  friend  so 
mourned  has  become  a  part  of  the  great  world  of  nature,  that  his 
life  is  absorbed  into  the  life  of  the  whole. 

"Thy  voice  is  on  the  rolling  air; 

I  hear  thee  where  the  waters  run ; 
Thou  standest  in  the  rising  sun, 
And  in  the  setting  thou  art  fair. 

"My  love  involves  the  love  before; 
My  love  is  vaster  passion  now ; 
Though  mixed  with  God  and  Nature  thou, 
I  seem  to  love  thee  more  and  more."^ 

There  are  fewer  traces  of  the  Hegelian  type  of  idealism  in>"In 
Memoriam"  than  of  the  doctrines  most  characteristic  of  Kant 
and  Schelhng.  Perhaps  the  hackneyed  "stepping-stones  of  their 
dead  selves"  may  contain  a  suggestion  of  the  chain  of  selves  that 
Hegel  says  makes  personality,  of  the  continual  struggle  that^^he 
says  makes  life.     Perhaps  there  is  a  hint  in  the  last  quatrain — 

"That  God,  which  ever  lives  and  loves, 
One  God,  one  law,  one  element, 
And  one  far-off  divine  event, 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves, "^ — 

» Ibid.,  Canto  LXXXVIII.  » Ibid.,  Canto  CXXV. 

*  Ibid.,  Canto  CXVI.  *  Ibid.,  Epilogue,  last  stanza. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  89 

of  the  infinite,  all-conquering  God  of  Hegel,  as  well  as  of  the 
crown  of  a  developing  and  unfolding  creation  that  was  Schelling's 
conception  of  deity.  But  the  feeling  for  life  as  a  progressive 
development,  growing  rather  than  static — a  feeling  which  had 
in  it  the  germ  of  an  evolutionary  philosophy — has  in  Tennyson 
much  more  the  tone  of  the  romanticists,  already  a  familiar  note  in 
English  poetry  through  the  work  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge, 
than  it  has  of  the  less  emotional  viewpoint  of  Hegel's  philosophy 
of  history.  It  is  far  from  improbable  that  Hegel,  a  writer  later 
in  time  and  later  known  in  England  than  Kant  or  Schelling,  had 
not  been  long  enough  familiar  to  Tennyson  for  his  ideas  to  have 
become  an  integral  part  of  the  poet's  philosophical  equipment. 

For  Tennyson  was  always  a  conservative,  in  art  as  in  politics 
and  morals.  Had  he  not  been  so,  he  would  have  been  as  fully 
abreast  of  contemporary  philosophy  as  was  Carlyle.  On  the 
contrary,  not  only  did  he  show  Httle  the  influence  of  Hegel,  but 
he  definitely  refused  to  be  persuaded  by  the  views  of  the  most 
recent  metaphysicians  of  his  time.  That  he  knew  both  Comte* 
and  Schopenhauer,  if  not  intensively,  at  least  in  the  way  in  which 
the  intelligent  layman  is  always  aware  of  the  thought  currents  in 
his  atmosphere,  is  evident  from  his  repeated  refutation  of  the 
ideas  of  the  French  positivist  and  the  German  pessimist.  When 
the  voice  of  Nature  echoes  the  cry  of  materialism, 

"'I  bring  to  life,  I  bring  to  death; 

The  spirit  does  but  mean  the  breath: 
I  know  no  more,'"^ 

Tennyson  answers  with  a  refusal  to  believe  in  such  utter  futility 
as  an  ending  for  a  life  of  splendid  purpose.  "O  life  as  futile,  then, 
as  frail"^  might  be  a  quotation  from  Schopenhauer;  the  difference 
is  that  Schopenhauer  would  utter  it  as  a  conclusion,  while  with 
Tennyson  it  is  a  protest.  It  is  the  philosophy  that  abandoned 
the  search  for  the  infinite,  to  be  content  with  the  effort  to  under- 
stand and  improve  the  finite,  that  is  described  in  the  passage 
which  shows  the  inadequacy  of  knowledge  "cut  from  love  and 
faith."     Such  knowledge  is  hke 

"some  wild  Pallas  from  the  brain 

» 1798-1857,  Cours  de  Philosophie  Positive,  published  1839-42. 
*  In  Memoriam,  Canto  LVI. 
'  Ibid.,  Canto  LVI. 


90  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

"Of  demons,  fiery-hot  to  burst 
All  barriers  in  her  onward  race 
For  power.     Let  her  know  her  place 
She  is  the  second,  not  the  first. 

"  A  higher  hand  must  make  her  mild."^ 

Materialism  would  prove  "human  love  and  truth"  to  be  but  "dying 
Nature's  earth  and  Ume";  but  man's  mission  on  earth  is  to  prove 

"That  Ufe  is  not  an  idle  ore, 

"  But  iron  dug  from  central  gloom, 

And  heated  hot  with  burning  fears, 

And  dipt  in  baths  of  hissing  tears, 
And  batter'd  with  the  shocks  of  doom 

"To  shape  and  use."* 

Men  are  not  "wholly  brain,  magnetic  mockeries";  not  merely 
"cunning  casts  in  clay,"  even  though  the  science  of  which  Comte 
was  the  philosophical  prophet  may  prove  that  they  are  so.^ 

Ck)mte  and  the  EngUsh  thinkers  who  followed  him  held  their 
philosophy  of  materialism  without  being  thereby  plunged  into 
pessimism,  for  the  corollary  of  a  view  of  life  that  ends  with  the 
finite  was  to  them  an  activity  for  the  betterment  of  finite  con- 
ditions. A  belief  involving  action  can  never  be  pessimistic;  it  is 
too  busy.  But  had  Tennyson  been  convinced  by  the  positivists, 
the  issue  for  him  would  probably  have  been  like  Schopenhauer's, 
for  in  his  thought  the  only  element  that  saves  life  as  it  is  from 
futility  is  the  faith  in  the  ultimate  reality  "beyond  the  veil." 
Postulating,  like  Kant,  that  reahty,  he  is  ready  with  his  answer 
for  the  philosopher  who  called  Ufe  an  evil  dream.  No  poet, 
perhaps,  has  more  adequately  expressed  despair: 

"From  out  waste  places  comes  a  cry, 
And  murmurs  from  the  dying  Sun; 

"And  all  the  phantom.  Nature,  stands — 
With  all  the  music  in  her  tone, 
A  hollow  echo  of  my  own — 
A  hollow  form  with  empty  hands."* 

» Ibid.,  Canto  CXIV.  »  Ibid.,  Canto  CXXI. 

« Ibid.,  Canto  CXVIII.  « Ibid.,  Canto  III. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  91 

No  poet  has  expressed  more  comprehensively  the  hopelessness 
that  comes  with  disillusionment: 

"  Be  near  me  when  the  sensuous  frame 

Is  racked  with  pangs  that  conquer  trust; 
And  Time,  a  maniac  scattering  dust, 
And  Life,  a  Fury  slinging  flame. 

"Be  near  me  when  my  faith  is  dry, 
And  men  the  flies  of  latter  spring, 
That  lay  their  eggs,  and  sting  and  sing 
And  weave  their  petty  cells  and  die."* 

But  no  poet  has  more  satisfyingly  replied  to  the  voices  of  despair 
and  disillusionment.  Perhaps  pessimism  is  a  logical  outcome  of 
the  philosophy  of  Kant  and  Fichte;  but  by  virtue  of  the  intuition 
that  is  mightier  than  logic,  Tennyson  trusts 

"that  somehow  good 
WiU  be  the  final  goal  of  ill." 

His  is  a  very  different  optimism  from  the  casuistry  which  proved 
to  its  own  satisfaction  that  "Whatever  is  is  right."  The  later 
and  more  thoughtful  poet  dared  not  assert  so  dogmatic  and  assured 
a  knowledge.  His  antidote  for  pessimism  is  not  proof,  not  knowl- 
edge, but  faith : 

"Behold,  we  know  not  anything; 

I  can  but  trust  that  good  shall  fall 
At  last — far  off — at  last,  to  all."^ 

The  way  winds  onward  drearily  enough;  but  patience  in  the 
pursuit  of  it  comes  from  the  purpose 

"  to  prove 
No  lapse  of  moons  can  canker  Love."' 

In  that  beUef  lies  the  secret  of  Tennyson's  avoidance  of  Schopen- 
hauer's gloom.  For  Tennyson's  philosophy  is  a  philosophy  of  the 
triumph  of  love  over  death,  a  triumph  inevitable  while  human 
love  is  a  part  of  the  divine,  the  "immortal  Love."  It  is  the 
sentinel  of  Love,  the  "king  and  lord,"  who 

"whispers  to  the  worlds  of  space. 
In  the  deep  night,  that  all  is  well."* 

» Ibid.,  Canto  L.  « Ibid.,  Canto  XXVI. 

« Ibid.,  Canto  LIV.  *  Ibid.,  Canto  CXXVI. 


92  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

If  we  looked  solely  at  the  metaphysicians  of  the  period,  it  might 
seem  that  at  last  has  appeared  a  poet-philosopher  independent  in 
his  thinking  of  the  influences  of  current  opinion.  But,  as  will  be 
seen  later,  the  idea  of  love  as  a  solution  for  life  was  the  central 
principle  of  the  new  reHgion  of  the  nineteenth  century;  and  in 
this  respect  Tennyson  was  merely  influenced  more  strongly  by 
the  religious  than  by  the  metaphysical  thought  of  his  time. 

Thinking  of  the  poem  as  a  whole,  however,  unmistakably  the 
strongest  philosophical  bias  therein  manifest  is  the  doctrine  of 
Kant.  Just  as  it  is  between  the  lines  that  the  influence  of  the 
romantic  school  upon  Tennyson's  feeUng  for  nature  is  to  be  found, 
so  Kant's  postulates  of  reality  are  interwoven  with  the  whole 
fabric  of  the  argument  by  which  the  poet  arrives  at  conviction. 
He  longs  to  beheve  in  God,  because  without  such  a  belief  life  is  a 
futility.  So  he  wills  to  believe,  and  postulates  the  God  who  alone 
makes  life  possible  and  endurable.  He  longs  to  believe  in  immor- 
tality, because,  if  Hallam  is  no  longer  alive,  life  for  his  friend  is 
insupportable.  So,  like  Kant,  he  wills  to  believe,  and  postulates 
the  immortal  life  which  alone  can  make  the  mortal  life  anything 
but  vain.  Here  is  something  very  like  pragmatism,  long  before 
WilHam  James;  and  yet  it  is  only  the  application  by  a  layman  of 
Kant's  categorical  imperative  to  an  agonizing  personal  problem. 
For,  after  all,  the  philosophy  of  "In  Memoriam"  remains  a 
personal  one.  Tennyson  in  the  writing  of  it  was  interested  in 
philosophy,  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  what  it  could  do  for  him 
in  an  acute  personal  crisis.  Its  claim  to  the  universality  that 
makes  it  art  lies  in  the  fact  that  every  human  soul  has  sooner  or 
later  to  face  a  similar  personal  crisis. 

It  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  "In  Memoriam"  is  far  from  being 
Tennyson's  only  philosophical  poem.  The  fact  that  he  was  by 
inclination,  throughout  his  life,  a  lover  of  "divine  Philosophy"  is 
evident  from  beginning  to  end  of  a  volume  of  his  collected  works. 
He  was  by  nature  far  more  really  a  thinker  on  abstract  questions 
than  was  either  Davies  or  Pope.  Davies  had  the  legal  mind  and 
the  executive  temperament;  his  venture  into  philosophy  was 
youthful  and  temporary.  Pope  was  essentially  a  critic,  whose 
metaphysical  flights  were  on  borrowed  wings.  Tennyson  needed 
no  tutor;  the  ideas  to  which  he  gave  expression  may  have  been 
other  men's  ideas,  but  he  had  lived  with  them  until  they  had 
become  a  part  of  him,  in  no  sense  an  echo  or  a  parrot-like  repetition. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  93 

Yet  even  Tennyson  did  not  go  ahead  of  his  guides.  Had  he  been 
an  independent  philosopher,  he  would  have  followed  Kant's 
premises  to  their  conclusion,  and  have  arrived  by  his  own  road  at 
pessimism,  like  Schopenhauer,  or  at  agnosticism,  like  Huxley  and 
Spencer;  even  as  Da  vies,  if  he  had  thought  independently  and 
progressively,  would  have  taken  the  step  ahead  that  waited  for 
Hobbes;  and  as  Pope,  not  content  with  past  philosophies,  would 
have  reached  the  position  of  Hume. 

While  German  philosophers  had  been  evolving  and,  little  by 
little,  sending  to  England  doctrines  pregnant  with  possibilities 
of  a  new  and  fuller  life  of  the  spirit,  English  philosophy  had  been 
progressing  along  a  line  no  less  new  but  much  more  practical. 
Utilitarianism  was  the  contribution  to  philosophy  of  late  eighteenth 
century  English  thought,  as  the  science  of  political  economy  was 
its  contribution  to  the  material  of  education.  The  development 
of  that  side  of  eighteenth  century  thought  which  emphasized 
economic  problems  has  already  been  traced.  When  metaphysical 
speculation  reached  the  sceptical  barrier  which  blocked  Hume's 
further  progress,  English  thought,  instead  of  leaping  the  barrier 
like  Kant,  went  around  it,  following  its  natural  practical  bent. 
Hume  himself,  while  subordinating  the  economic  to  the  political 
element  in  the  life  of  a  state,  nevertheless  based  his  really  utilitarian 
ethics  on  economic  considerations.  The  test  of  conduct  is  its 
effect  upon  the  happiness  of  the  whole  community,  and  the  greatest 
amount  of  happiness,  and  consequently  the  greatest  opportunity 
for  virtuous  conduct,  is  possible  under  such  conditions  of  peace 
and  security  as  permit  the  flourishing  of  industry  and  art.^ 

Hume's  point  of  view  was  ethical  and  his  interest  in  the  abstract; 
yet  it  is  impossible  to  mistake  the  presence  in  his  doctrine,  as  in 
that  of  his  early  contemporaries.  Gay ,2  Tucker,^  and  Paley,*  of 
the  germ  of  the  practical  utilitarian  teaching  popularized  by 
Bentham^  and  James  Mill^  under  the  slogan,  "The  greatest  good 

'  Bonar,  Philosophy  and  Political  Economy,  pp.  108-112. 

*  A  Dissertation  Concerning  Virtue,  by  Rev.  John  Gay,  published  1731. 
'  The  Light  of  Nature  Piirsued,  by  Abraham  Tucker,  published  1768-78. 

*  Principles  of  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy,  by  WilHam  Paley,  published 
1785. 

'  1748-1832,  Fragment  on  Government,  1776;  Principles  of  Morals  and 
Legislation,  1789. 

*  Politic/il  Economy,  1821;  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Humayi  Mind, 
1829. 


94  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

of  the  greatest  number."  The  details  of  the  association  of  the 
visionary  recluse  and  the  practical  psychologist,  an  association 
under  the  guidance  of  which  a  new  party,  the  "philosophical 
radicals,"  initiated  the  movement  that  brought  about  the  Reform 
Bill  of  1832,  need  not  be  rehearsed  here.  There  is  in  "In  Memo- 
riam"  no  trace  of  interest  in  the  abstract  economic  science  devel- 
oped as  a  new  subject  of  education  by  Bentham  and  Mill,  nor  in 
the  more  concrete  type  of  pohtical  economy  which  came  into  its 
own  with  the  publication  of  the  "Wealth  of  Nations,"  and  was  de- 
veloped by  Malthus  with  his  theory  of  population,  by  Ricardo  with 
his  theory  of  rent  and  wages,  and  by  the  ideaUsts  of  industry  with 
the  doctrine  of  laisser  faire.  If  Ught  were  to  be  sought  alone  from 
this  poem,  the  question  whether  Tennyson  were  a  mercantihst  or 
a  physiocrat,  a  Benthamite  or  a  Malthusian,  must  remain  unan- 
swered. But  hand  in  hand  with  the  progress  of  economic  science, 
which  in  its  turn  had  grown  out  of  the  industrial  and  social  changes 
of  the  Revolutionary  period,  went  a  deep  and  wide  awakening  of 
the  popular  conscience  to  industrial  responsibility  for  "the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number,"  With  such  a  movement,  manifest 
in  the  social  and  humanitarian  reforms  great  and  small  which 
marked  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  which  grew 
directly  out  of  the  educational  work  of  the  economists,  Tennyson 
was  by  temperament  deeply  in  sympathy,  as  he  shows  in  other 
poems  than  this.  This  spirit  of  altruism  finds  reflection  in  "In 
Memoriam"  in  more  than  one  passage  of  power  and  beauty, 
notably  the  famous  New  Year's  Eve  lyric. 

Again,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Arthur  Hallam's  father  was 
the  greatest  historian  of  Tennyson's  period,^  the  poem  to  Arthur's 
memory  shows  no  trace  of  the  revival  of  historical  interest  which 
marked  the  years  immediately  after  the  Napoleonic  era.  History 
in  its  modern  form  belongs  to  the  nineteenth  century,  as  the 
beginning  of  economic  science  belongs  to  the  eighteenth.  Annals 
and  chronicles,  diaries  and  apologetic  biographies  had  kept  records 
which  later  were  to  be  invaluable  as  sources  of  historical  material. 
Hume  had  conceived  the  idea  of  an  impartial  history ,2  but  his 
work  was  superficial  and  far  from  scientific,  and  his  interest  in 
his  material  was  that  of  the  philosophical  student  of  human  nature, 

*  Henry  Hallam:    Europe  During  the  Middle  Ages,   1818;    Constitutional 
History  of  England,  1827;    Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,  1837-9. 
^History  of  England,  published  1754-61. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  95 

who,  like  Hegel,  sought  in  the  past  an  understanding  of  the  ways 
of  men.  Gibbon,^  the  first  serious  literary  historian  to  look  upon 
historical  work  as  a  primary  interest,  made  his  exhaustive  and 
still  authentic  story  of  the  fall  of  Rome  an  opportunity  for  a 
dialectic  against  ecclesiastical  perversions  of  Christianity  which 
unfortunately  attracted  an  undue  proportion  of  attention,  and 
has  tended  to  obscure  the  real  value  and  historic  impartiality  of 
his  work.  It  remained  for  a  German  scholar  to  become  the 
accepted  exponent  of  the  true  historical  method.  So  enthusiastic 
was  the  interest  of  English  students,  during  the  very  years  when 
"In  Memoriam"  was  in  process  of  development,  in  the  work  of 
Niebuhr^  as  translated  into  English  and  as  imitated  by  such 
English  scholars  as  Arnold  of  Rugby,  Thirlwall,  and  Grote,^  that 
it  seems  impossible  for  Tennyson  not  to  have  realized  the  signifi- 
cance of  this  new  step  in  the  progress  of  learning,  by  which  the 
critical  method  was  applied  to  history  and  history  became  a 
science.  Yet  "In  Memoriam"  shows  no  trace  of  interest  in  the 
great  new  world  of  historical  research  henceforth  open  to  the 
mind  of  the  scholar. 

The  third  new  element  that  entered  the  field  of  education  with 
the  late  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries  was  a  new  type 
of  scientific  interest.  Physical  science  had  passed  out  of  the  realm 
of  theory  and  had  reached  a  concrete  climax  in  its  application  to 
mechanics  and  to  industry — witness  the  steam  engine,  the  modern 
factory,  and  the  beginning  of  transportation  by  machinery.  The 
scientist  of  the  study  and  the  laboratory  left  the  laws  of  motion 
to  inventors  and  machinists  and  turned  his  attention  to  the  laws 
which  governed  existence  in  a  universe  newly  discovered  to  be  a 
growing  and  organic  unity.  Evolution,  as  a  solution  of  scientific 
problems  and  as  a  philosophy,  was  in  the  world  long  before  Charles 
Darwin.  Lessing  and  Hegel,  as  has  been  seen,  conceived  the 
present  world  and  its  life  merely  as  a  product  of  the  past,  as  a 
growth,  a  progress,  a  development.  Even  before  he  made  his 
famous  categories,  Kant  had  attempted  to  trace  the  evolution 
of  the  universe  from  primeval  chaos  to  the  present  orderly  system, 

^  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  published  1776. 
2  Niebuhr's  History  of  Rome,  translated  by  Julius  Hare  and  Connop  Thirl- 
wall, 1828-32. 

'  Arnold,  History  of  Rome,  1828-47. 

Histories  of  Greece  by  Thirlwall,  1844,  and  Grote,  184.5. 


96  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

by  one  tremendous  leap  of  the  scientific  imagination  hypothesizing 
the  nebular  theory^  which  Laplace  and  Herschel,  a  half  century 
later,  were  to  establish  scientifically.  The  historical  method, 
which  Hegel  appHed  to  the  study  of  human  nature  and  institutions, 
men  of  science  began  to  apply  to  the  study  of  all  existent  forms  of 
organic  life,  with  their  origins  and  growth. 

So  the  varieties  of  scientific  research  that  occupy  the  foreground 
of  thought,  in  the  years  that  supply  the  educational  background 
for  Tennyson,  were  geology,  zoology,  biology,  and  botany.  The 
pubUc  interest  in  these  subjects  may  be  estimated  from  the  names 
of  the  numerous  speciaHzed  scientific  societies  founded  between 
1800  and  1830,^  and  from  the  long  fist  of  scientific  magazines 
bearing  on  these  topics.^  Natural  scientists  accompanied  exploring 
expeditions,  for  the  study  of  the  flora  and  fauna  of  distant  lands. 
While  chemistry  and  physics  were  taking  on  their  modern  form 
under  the  leadership  of  Dalton*  and  Joule,^  geology,  the  origin 
of  which  was  due  to  EngUsh  scholarship,  was  coming  into  its  own. 
As  early  as  1785,  Hutton's®  "Theory  of  the  Earth"  had  opened 
up  endless  geological  vistas  reveahng  down  their  length  the 
hitherto  unimagined  age  of  the  earth.  Then  with  WilUam  Smith's 
work  on  fossils^  came  the  beginning  of  histological  geology,  reaching 
its  climax  in  the  work  of  Lyell,*  and  a  foundation  was  suppUed  for 
research  that  would  establish  the  vague  hypotheses  of  the  evolution 
of  organic  life.  Not  only  existing  but  extinct  species  could  now  be 
studied. 

Tennyson,  in  the  poem  under  consideration,  could  not  have 
been  under  the  influence  of  Charles  Darwin,  for  the  results  of  the 

'  Schurman,  Ethical  Import  of  Darwinism,  p.  50,  sq. 

2 1803,  Royal  Horticultural  Society;  1807,  Geological  Society  of  London; 
1819,  Cambridge  Philosophical  Society;  1826,  Zo) logical  Society  of  London; 
1831,  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science;  1839,  Royal 
Botanic  Society. 

2  E.  g.,  1841,  Annals  and  Magazine  of  Natural  History. 

<John  Dalton,  1766-1844.  Originated  molecular  theory.  Founder  of 
modern  organic  chemistry.  Published,  1810,  A  New  System  of  Chemical 
Philosophy. 

^  James  Prescott  Joule,  1818-1889.  Discovered  relation  between  heat  and 
energy,  and  law  of  conservation  of  energy. 

8  James  Hutton,  Scotch  geologist,  1726-97.     Founder  of  dynamic  geology. 

'William  Smith,  1769-1839.  Published,  1815,  First  Geological  Map  of 
England. 

» Sir  Charles  Lyell,  1797-1875.     Published,  1833,  Principles  of  Geology. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  97 

reflections  ensuing  upon  the  epoch-making  voyage  of  the  Beagle 
were  not  formulated  and  published  until  nine  years  after  "In 
Memoriam"  was  finished.  But  the  idea  that  present  species 
were  descendants  of  preexisting  simpler  forms  was  in  the  air. 
Erasmus  Darwin,  Goethe,  and  St.  Hilaire  had  almost  simultaneous- 
ly, in  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century,  announced  such  a 
conclusion  as  their  belief.^  In  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  French  naturalist  Lamarck  was,^  as  Darwin 
himself  said,  "arousing  attention  to  the  probability  of  the  change 
in  the  organic,  as  well  as  in  the  inorganic,  world  being  the  result 
of  law,  and  not  of  miraculous  interposition."  Darwin's  work 
was  only  a  cUmax  and  a  convincing  conclusion  to  much  previous 
speculation  on  a  theme  that  before  1850  had  become  the  subject 
of  discussion  not  only  by  scientists  but  by  theologians,  whose 
tranquil  confidence  in  the  accepted  "scheme  of  things  entire" 
was  badly  upset  by  so  revolutionary  a  doctrine.  In  "In  Memo- 
riam" is  reflected  the  uncertainty  of  the  mind  of  the  general 
public,  neither  scientific  nor  theological — a  mind  inevitably 
impelled  in  the  direction  of  a  new  knowledge,  and  yet  looking 
back  with  longing  and  regret  toward  the  peace  of  past  certainties. 
!S(Such  a  cUnging  to  past  beliefs  must  underlie  the  passage  where 
Tennyson  declares  his  belief  in  ultimate  good  for  all,  in  spite  of 
the  ruthless  sacrifice  of  the  individual  on  the  road  to  "the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number" — the  cruel  road  that  was  later  to 
be  called  natural  selection.  "Somehow,"  the  poet  protests, 
"somehow,"  in  spite  of  the  apparently  ruthless  working  of  natural 
law,  good 

"Will  be  the  final  goal  of  Ul, 

To  pangs  of  nature,  sins  of  will, 
Defects  of  doubt,  and  taints  of  blood; 

"That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet; 
That  not  one  Ufe  shall  be  destroy'd, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete; 

1  Schurman,  Ethical  Impart  of  Darimnis7n,  p.  52,  sq. 

Erasmus  Darwin  published,  1794,  Zodnomia.  Goethe  published,  1790, 
Metamorphoses  of  Plants.  St.  Hilaire,  French  naturalist,  1779-1853,  devel- 
oped, 1795,  sq.,  theory  of  species  as  modifications  of  type. 

^  Jean  Baptiste  Pierre  Antoine  de  Monet  de  Lamarck,  1744-1829.  Philos- 
ophie  zoOloffique,  1809;    Histoire  naturelle  des  animaux  sans  vertibres,  1815-22. 


98  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

"That  not  a  worm  is  cloven  in  vain; 
That  not  a  moth  with  vain  desire 
Is  shrivell'd  in  a  fruitless  fire, 
Or  but  subserves  another's  gain."^ 

The  revelations  of  science  seem  an  evil  dream,  dispelling  the 
vision  of  hope  for  a  future  Hfe.  To  Tennyson  as  to  his  contempo- 
raries in  the  church,  God  and  Nature  appeared  at  strife, 

"  So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 
So  careless  of  the  single  life."^ 

It  was  the  type  that  evolved  through  natural  selection;  it  was 
the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  that  brought  one  seed  out  of 
fifty  to  fruition.  Longing  to  think,  as  in  his  childhood,  that  not 
a  sparrow  fell  unnoticed  to  the  ground,  he  was  forced  against  his 
own  longings  to  recognize  the  implacable  working  of  natural  law 
in  the  organic  as  in  the  inorganic  world.  Belief  in  a  God  of  love 
must  be  maintained  against  the  shriekings  of  a  "Nature  red  in 
tooth  and  claw  with  ravine."^  Nor  had  the  findings  of  geology 
escaped  him;  the  voice  of  Nature  cried  "from  scarped  cliff  and 
quarried  stone, "^  where  the  record  of  the  rocks  showed  the  dis- 
appearance of  a  thousand  tj'pes.  The  earth  he  knew  to  be  not 
only  a  "round  of  green,"  but  the  "orb  of  flame "^  which  Hutton 
had  declared  it.  The  nebular  theory  found  eloquent,  though 
perhaps  not  convinced,  expression  in  lines  of  vivid  poetry : 

"They  say, 
The  solid  earth  whereon  we  tread 

"In  tracts  of  fluent  heat  began, 

And  grew  to  seeming-random  forms, 
The  seeming  prey  of  cyclic  storms, 
Till  at  the  last  arose  the  man ; 

"Who  throve  and  branch'd  from  chme  to  clime, 
The  herald  of  a  higher  race."* 

There  is  conversance  with  the  evolutionary  theories  of  Lamarck 
in  such  lines  as  those,  supplemented  by  the  optimistic  moral  which 
is  the  cheerful  side  of  a  belief  in  evolution,  in  the  admonition  to 

"Move  upward,  working  out  the  beast, 
And  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die." 

» In  Memoriam,  Canto  LIV.  *  Ibid.,  Canto  XXXIV. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  LV.  « Ibid.,  Canto  CXVIII. 

*  In  Memoriam,  Canto  LVI. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  99 

In  the  last  part  of  the  poem  science  reached  its  triumph  over 
tradition,  as,  by  a  mental  process  that  might  serve  as  index  for 
what  every  progressive  mind  in  that  period  of  readjustment  had 
to  pass  through,  Tennyson  arrived  at  a  hopeful  conception  of  the 
doctrine  of  evolution.  His  own  generation,  according  to  the  new 
view  of  life,  he  saw  to  be  merely  a  link  between  the  lower  manhood 
of  the  past  and  the  higher  manhood  of  the  future — 

"the  crowning  race 

"Of  those  that,  eye  to  eye,  shall  look 

On  knowledge ;  under  whose  command 
Is  Earth  and  Earth's,  and  in  their  hand 
Is  Nature  like  an  open  book; 

"No  longer  half -akin  to  brute, 

For  all  we  thought  and  loved  and  did. 
And  hoped,  and  suffer'd,  is  but  seed 
Of  what  in  them  is  flower  and  fruit/'^ 

At  first  thought  it  may  seem  remarkable  that  Tennyson  showed 
such  familiarity  with  the  scientific  side  of  the  new  learning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  not  with  its  equally  characteristic  historical 
and  economic  phases.  But  his  ear  found  no  music  in  the  narratives 
of  wars  and  treaties,  of  the  risings  and  downfalls  of  nations  that 
made  up  the  tale  of  the  centuries.  There  was  neither  thrill  nor 
color  nor  emotion  in  the  pages  of  statistics  and  facts  that  made  up 
the  early  type  of  political  economy.  And  poetry,  for  Tennyson, 
must  have  in  it  music,  color,  emotion.  A  holy  Roman  empire 
stirred  him  to  no  such  flights  of  imagination  as  did  the  story  of 
earth's  evolution : 

"There  rolls  the  deep  where  grew  the  tree. 
O  earth,  what  changes  hast  thou  seen! 
There  where  the  long  street  roars  hath  been 
The  stillness  of  the  central  sea."' 

A  Malthusian  theory  of  population  or  an  Iron  Law  of  Wages 
touched  no  responsive  chord  in  the  soul  of  one  who  had  seen  a 
vision  of  Science,  reaching  forth  her  arms 

"To  feel  from  world  to  world."' 

It  was  in  science  that  he  recognized  material  for  the  play  of  his 

*  In  Memoriam,  Epilogue.  '  Ibid.,  Canto  XXI. 

'  Ibid.,  Canto  CXXIII. 


100  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

imagination,  just  as  in  the  idealistic  philosophy  rather  than  the 
utilitarian  he  found  a  system  of  thought  with  which  his  poetically 
imaginative  temperament  could  sympathize. 

Is  it  safe  to  generalize  from  three  instances?  If  such  an  assump- 
tion may  be  ventured,  the  conclusion  seems  unavoidable  that  the 
poet,  however  cultured,  however  famiUar  with  the  learning  of  hifl 
day,  has  no  power  to  advance  in  thought  independently  of  the 
scholars  and  thinkers  of  his  time.  He  is  not  the  pioneer,  opening 
up  the  desert  path;  rather  he  comes  after,  by  the  beauty  of  his 
poetic  gift  making  the  desert  path  to  blossom  as  the  rose.  One 
by-product  of  his  work,  because  he  himself  is  aware  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  study  and  the  laboratory,  is  the  suggestion  of  their 
content  to  the  lovers  of  literary  art  who  follow  his  guidance. 
Without  the  interweaving  in  the  fabric  of  his  poem  of  the  most 
mature  thought  and  knowledge  of  his  time,  his  work  would  be 
flimsy,  futile,  and  negligible.  Yet  his  imagination  and  his  gift 
of  music  are  his  own;  and  though  his  thought  is  a  reflection  of  the 
thought  of  others,  his  interpretation  of  the  thought  gives  it  wings 
to  fly  into  the  whole  earth. 


With  a  little  alteration,  a  familiar  axiom  can  be  made  to  read, 
Things  that  reflect  the  same  thing  must  be  similar  to  each  other. 
If  a  poet  reflects  his  period  (as,  so  far  in  the  discussion,  these  three 
poet-philosophers  seem  to  do)  in  its  historical,  social,  educational 
and  philosophical  conditions  and  qualities,  then  in  spirit  and  style 
he  will  not  be  unlike  the  other  poets  representative  of  that  period. 
Consequently,  a  proof  that  a  writer  is  a  mirror  of  his  time  requires 
that  he  be  compared  with  his  contemporaries.  The  group  of 
poets  under  discussion  have  so  far  commanded  attention  as  thinkers 
rather  than  as  artists.  As  thinkers  they  have  been  shown  to  be 
followers,  not  leaders.  But  in  a  comparison  of  a  poet-philosopher 
with  his  literary  contemporaries,  he  can  no  longer  be  viewed 
exclusively  as  a  philosopher.  Here  is  the  field  where  the  style, 
not  the  thought,  is  the  man.  It  is  his  art,  not  his  thought,  that 
demands  primary  attention  in  comparing  him  with  other  artists. 
And  though  as  philosopher  he  may  be  an  echo,  as  artist  he  may 
utter  a  music  all  his  own.  It  is  therefore  necessary  not  only  to 
show  the  similarities  of  Davies,  Pope,  and  Tennyson  to  other 
poets,  and  thus  to  make  evident  that  all  alike  express  their  age; 
but  also  to  point  out  the  unlikenesses  that  grow  out  of  the  indi- 
viduality of  each  as  artist. 

The  position  of  the  three  poets  under  survey  is  alike  in  that 
each  was  the  voice  of  the  end  of  a  movement  or  phase  of  English 
life.  The  epoch  which  was  closing  in  the  years  when  the  work  of 
Davies  began  had  two  radically  opposite  sides,  so  far  as  England 
was  concerned.  It  was  politically  an  age  of  an  unexampled 
national  enthusiasm,  marked  by  a  forward-looking  progressiveness 
that  counted  no  adventure  too  rash,  no  enterprise  too  daring,  for 
England  and  the  queen.  At  the  same  time  it  was  an  age  of  not 
yet  outworn  respect  for  the  authority  of  the  past — for  classic 
models  and  ideals  in  literature,  for  ancient  and  mediaeval  philos- 
ophies, and  for  the  teachings  of  revealed  and  traditional  religion. 
Whether  recognized  or  not,  the  iron  hand  of  the  church  still 
dominated  the  writer  who,  though  in  reality  free  to  pursue  his  art 
under  no  mandate  but  that  of  his  own  conscience,  yet  felt  that 
art  for  art's  sake  was  pagan,  and  that  his  work  must  be  merely 
the  means  to  an  ethical  or  didactic  end.  It  remained  for  the 
nineteenth  century  to  take  pride  in  its  aesthetic  sense.      The 

101 


102  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

lighter  songs  and  lyrics  in  the  delicate  grace  and  beauty  of  which 
lies  the  charm  of  Elizabethan  poetrj--  were  for  the  most  part  free 
of  moral  intention.  But  let  a  poet  once  conceive  an  extended  and 
serious  poem,  and  at  once  his  intent  became  not  to  entertain  but 
to  edify,  not  to  please  but  to  preach.  A  sonnet  sequence  might 
waste  its  sweetness  on  so  light  a  thing  as  love;  but  the  poem 
which  was  really  to  figure  as  a  magnum  opus  must  have  a  purpose 
worthy  of  the  weight  of  learning  that  was  to  be  exempUfied  in  it. 

So  the  crowning  glory  of  non-dramatic  Elizabethan  poetry 
was  a  colorful,  vivid,  fantastic  epic  of  art,  rich  in  atmosphere, 
varied  in  conception,  yet  dependent  for  its  vitality  on  the  poet's 
intention  to  embody  in  his  hero  all  the  Platonic  virtues.  The 
"Faery  Queen"  might  easily  have  been,  like  the  prose  "Morte 
d' Arthur,"  merely  a  narrative  of  the  deeds  of  a  national  hero, 
transformed  by  legend  into  a  tale  of  magic  and  miracle.  Instead, 
the  Red  Cross  Knight  is  a  hero,  not  of  England  but  of  Christendom; 
the  lovely  lady  who  rides  beside  him  on  her  lowly  ass  is  that 
universal  and  unchanging  truth  for  whose  sake  the  noblest  man- 
hood of  all  ages  strives;  the  false  Duessa  wears  the  ever-changing 
guise  that  error  is  skilled  in  putting  on;  dwarf  and  enchanter, 
Saracen  and  giant,  all  the  magical  beings  of  Spenser's  faeryland 
are  symbolic  of  moral  and  ideal  realities.  Later  poets,  not  gifted 
with  Spenser's  imaginative  wealth,  but  dowered  with  his  Puritan 
conscientiousness,  clothed  the  morals  which  they  were  impelled 
to  utter,  not  in  the  gold  and  purple  of  fantastic  narrative,  but  in 
the  sober  gray  of  grave  and  serious  verse. 

So  Daniel,  favorite  poet  of  the  1590's,  writer  of  one  of  the 
fashionable  sequences  of  "sugared  sonnets,"  and  creator  of 
graceful  lyrics,  spent  the  largest  proportion  of  his  poetic  years 
upon  a  series  of  historical  narratives  known  as  "The  Civile 
Warres,"  in  which  the  purpose  to  instruct  his  public  as  to  one 
phase  of  English  history  shared  the  poet's  interest  with  the 
intention  to  draw  from  that  history  the  salutary  moral  lessons 
for  which  it  gave  opportunity.  So,  too,  he  turned  from  his 
historical  project  to  a  philosophical  dialogue  in  defense  of  learning. 
This  poem,  "Musophilus,"  because  it  approaches  most  nearly 
in  theme  the  work  of  Da  vies,  is  the  best  for  purposes  of  comparison 
to  show  the  ethical  import  in  the  work  of  both  poets.  "Muso- 
philus,"^  then,  purports  to  be  a  discussion  between  a  lover  of  the 

1  Daniel's  Works,  ed.  by  A.  B.  Grosart,  Vol.  I,  p.  225,  sq. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  103 

world  and  a  lover  of  learning,  in  which  the  former  complains  that 
his  disputant  is  spending 

"  In  an  ungainefuU  Arte  thy  deerest  dayes, 
Tyring  thy  wits,  and  toyling  to  no  end, 
But  to  attaine  that  idle  smoake  of  Praise." 

Musophilus  replies,  with  but  few  interruptions  from  the  first 
speaker,  by  a  long  dissertation  in  praise  of  his  "sacred  art." 
Although  the  religious  enthusiasm  that  breathes  in  every  page  of 
Davies  is  wholly  lacking  here,  and  although  Musophilus  is  evident- 
ly one  of  those  fruitlessly  curious  persons  who,  according  to  Davies, 

"In  bookes  prophane seeke  for  knowledge  hid," 

nevertheless  the  spirit  of  gravity  and  earnestness  with  which 
Daniel  approaches  his  subject,  and  the  detailed  attention  which 
he  devotes  to  its  analysis  makes  it  possible  to  regard  the  poem  as 
being  in  the  same  class  with  the  much  longer  "Nosce  Teipsum." 
For  instance,  the  declaration, 

"  I  doe  more  in  Soule  esteeme, 
Than  all  the  gaine  of  dust  the  world  doth  crave," 

is  quite  in  the  vein  of  Davies  when  he  writes  of  "the  heavenly 
nature"  of  the  mind,  or  of  the  soul's  "power  to  know  all  things." 
Davies  questions  the  worth  of  general  knowledge  without  the 
self-knowledge  for  which  he  pleads: 

"What  is  this  knowledge  but  the  sky-stolne  fire. 
For  which  the  thief  still  chain'd  in  ice  doth  sit? 

What  can  we  know?  or  what  can  we  discerne? 
When  Error  chokes  the  windows  of  the  minde, 
The  divers  formes  of  things,  how  can  we  learne. 
That  have  been  ever  from  our  birthday  blind?  "^ 

Daniel  sets  a  higher  value  on  mere  knowledge  than  does  Davies, 
for  his  contention  is  that  life  is  valueless  without  knowledge;  yet 
the  passage  where  this  view  is  first  stated  is  striking  in  its  similarity 
to  the  one  just  quoted: 

"For  what  poore  bounds  have  they,  whom  but  th'  earth  bounds; 
What  is  their  end  whereto  their  care  attaines. 
When  the  thing  got  relieves  not,  but  confounds, 
Having  but  travail  to  succeede  their  paines? 
What  joy  hath  he  of  Uving,  that  propounds 
Affliction  but  his  end,  and  Griefe  his  gaines?  " 

» Davies'  Works,  ed.  by  A.  B.  Grosart,  Vol.  I,  pp.  17-18. 


104  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Yet  Daniel  is  not  urging  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  for  the  sake  of 
knowledge;  his  aim  is  as  practically  ethical  as  that  of  Davies,  who 
pleads  with  men  to  know  themselves  so  that  they  may  use  their 
powers  to  the  full.  Of  the  art  of  letters,  Daniel  writes,  with  equal 
emphasis  on  the  virtue  of  act  as  well  as  thought, 

"What  good  is  like  to  this. 
To  do  worthy  the  writing,  and  to  write 
Worthy  the  reading?" 

Daniel's  criticism  of  the  world  unguided  by  knowledge  is  remi- 
niscent of  Davies'  indictment  of  the  man  of  learning  unguided 
by  self-knowledge: 

"Strait,  all  that  holy  was,  unhallow'd  lies, 
The  scattred  carcasses  of  ruin'd  vowes: 
Then  Truth  is  false,  and'  now  hath  Blindnesse  eyes, 
Then  Zeale  trusts  all,  now  scarcely  what  it  knowes : 
That  evermore,  to  foolish  or  to  wise. 
It  fatall  is  to  be  seduc'd  with  showes." 

This  knowledge  which  Daniel  defends  is,  like  Davies'  self-knowl- 
edge, to  be  based  on  experience : 

"Should  not  grave  and  learn'd  Experience 
That  lookes  with  the  eyes  of  all  the  world  beside, 

And  with  all  ages  holdes  intelligence. 
Go  safer  than  Deceit  without  a  guide? 
Which  in  the  by-paths  of  her  diffidence 
Crossing  the  waies  of  Right,  still  runs  more  wide: 
Who  will  not  grant?  and  therefore  this  observe. 
No  state  stands  sure,  but  on  the  grounds  of  Right, 

Of  Vertue,  Knowledge,  Judgement  to  preserve." 

Thus  it  is  for  the  sake  of  virtue  that  Daniel  enjoins  knowledge. 
And  just  as  the  contemplation  of  the  powers  of  the  human  mind 
leads  Davies  to  an  acclamation  in  praise  of  its  Creator,  so  the 
defense  of  learning  inspires  the  less  religious  Daniel  to  an  ascription 
in  honor  of 

"heavenly  Eloquence, 
That  with  the  strong  reine  of  commanding  words. 
Dost  manage,  guide,  and  master  th'  eminence 
Of  men's  affections,  more  than  all  their  swords: 
Shall  we  not  offer  to  thy  Excellence, 
The  richest  treasure  that  oiu*  wit  affords? 
Thou  that  canst  doe  much  more  with  one  poore  pen 
Than  all  the  powres  of  Princes  can  effect." 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  105 

Such  quotations,  showing  the  similarity  in  spirit  of  two  poems, 
one  as  didactic  as  the  other,  might  be  multiplied.  Equally  easy, 
though  much  too  lengthy  for  the  present  discussion,  would  be  a 
proof  by  illustrations  from  the  text  that  the  intricate  and  detailed 
analysis  to  which  Daniel  subjects  his  subject,  human  learning,  is 
exactly  parallel  to  the  meticulous  care  with  which  Davies  dissects 
the  qualities  of  the  human  mind  which  make  the  theme  of  "Nosce 
Teipsum."  Neither  poet  trusts  to  implication  for  the  smallest 
link  in  his  chain  of  argument.  But  whereas  in  the  case  of  Davies 
the  result  of  this  method  is  to  give  to  the  style  a  childhke  sim- 
plicity and  directness  that  makes  the  argument  daylight  clear, 
in  the  case  of  Daniel  it  is  rather  to  befog  the  issue  until  the  reader 
is  lost  in  a  maze  of  words. 

In  some  other  respects  than  ethical  purpose  the  two  poems  are 
alike.  Both  show  the  preference  of  their  period  for  an  abstract 
theme.  But  Davies  treats  his  abstract  theme  in  so  concrete  a 
manner  as  to  rob  it  of  all  pedantry;  while  in  reading  Daniel  one  is 
tempted  at  times  to  sympathize  with  the  utilitarian  Philocosmos 
in  his  distaste  for 

"A  multitude  of  words  to  small  effect." 

In  both  poems  a  wealth  of  classical  learning  is  obvious  as  a 
background,  as  it  was  in  the  work  of  every  writer,  great  or  small, 
of  the  Elizabethan  age.  In  the  matter  of  style,  one  great  similarity 
is  in  the  use  of  the  rhetorical  simile,  the  legacy  to  hterature  of 
Lyly  and  Sidney.  Davies'  use  of  the  simile  has  already  been  noted ; 
like  passages  even  more  extended  appear  in  "Musophilus," 
where  the  "humorous  world"  is  compared  to  the  empty  bed  of  a 
creek  which  a  fickle  river  has  deserted  for  another  channel,  and 
where  the  soul  seeking  mere  fame  is  likened  to  a  "wanton  curte- 
zan."  In  both  Davies  and  Daniel,  however,  these  similes  make 
use  of  more  everyday,  homely  subjects  for  purposes  of  comparison 
than  do  the  highly  ornamental  and  conventional  figures  of  the 
earlier  Elizabethans. 

In  spite  of  this  sharing  by  the  two  writers  of  the  hterary  habits 
of  their  age,  there  are  many  ways  in  which  the  style  of  "Muso- 
philus"  lacks  the  compelling  power  of  "Nosce  Teipsum."  It  is 
less  direct,  less  vivid,  less  simple.  It  carries  with  it  a  sense  of 
greater  effort,  less  spontaneity.     Its  long  and  involved  sentences 


106  The  Poet  a.s  Philosopher 

make  the  thought  difficult  to  follow.  All  in  all,  it  is  less  truly 
poetry  than  the  work  of  Davies.  For  Davies  was  at  his  best,  as 
Daniel  was  not,  in  his  philosophical  writing.  To  compare  "Muso- 
philus"  with  some  of  the  finest  of  the  sonnets  to  DeUa — "Look, 
Delia,  how  we  esteem  the  half-blown  rose,"  or  "Let  others  sing  of 
knights  and  paladins,"  or  with  parts  of  the  "Complaint  of  Rosa- 
mond," or  with  one  of  the  lyrics  from  "Tethys'  Festival" — 

"  Pleasures  are  not,  if  they  last, 
In  their  passing  is  their  best. 
Glory  is  most  bright  and  gay 
In  a  flash  and  so  away" — 

is  to  realize  that  to  write  on  a  grave  and  philosophical  subject 
robbed  Daniel  of  much  of  his  poetic  quaUty.  Davies,  on  the  other 
hand,  possessed  of  a  temperament  as  much  philosophical  as 
poetic,  a  thinker  for  whom  grave  and  constructive  thought  was 
no  effort,  was  most  poetic  when  he  was  most  thoughtful. 

The  poet  of  the  period  who  most  thoroughly  represented  the 
ethical  interest  in  art  and  the  didactic  use  of  art  was  Fulke  Greville. 
Even  the  latter  portion  of  his  sonnet  sequence  "CaeUca"  is  made 
weighty  with  moral  reflections.^  And  "Caelica"  is  his  sole 
departure  from  grave  and  reflective  poetry,  the  character  of  which 
is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  each  long  poem  is  called  a  "Treatise." 
That  upon  "  Monarchie "  discusses  and  criticizes,  often  ironically, 
all  the  institutions  connected  with  the  hfe  of  a  state. ^  That  upon 
"Religion"  shows  the  deep  earnestness  and  sincerity  of  faith 
that  underlay  Greville's  life  and  work — as  in  the  stanza, 

"Then  by  affecting  pow'r,  we  cannot  know  Him; 
By  knowing  all  things  else,  we  know  him  less; 
Nature  contains  Him  not.  Art  cannot  show  Him; 
Opinions,  idols  and  not  God  express. 
Without,  in  Pow'r,  we  see  Him  everywhere; 
Within,  we  rest  not,  till  we  find  Him  there."^ 

It  is  impossible  not  to  see  the  Ukeness  of  the  reUgious  fervor  of 
such  a  passage  to  the  underlying  thought  of  Davies'  poem,  that 
the  chief  function  of  the  human  mind  is  to  know  God;   and  the 

I  Greville's  Works,  ed.  by  A.  B.  Grosart,  Vol.  III. 
*  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  6. 
'  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  241. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  107 

lines  quoted  may  be  taken  as  representative  of  Greville's  passion 
for  a  non-ecclesiastical  religion. 

But  Greville's  religious  position  is  much  more  modern  than 
that  of  Davies,  which  has  been  shown  to  be  an  inheritance  from 
scholastic  theology.  In  Greville  there  is  no  reverence  for  tradition- 
al authority.    The  church  to  him  is  invisible,  made  up  of  men  who 

"do  in  praying,  and  still  pray  in  doing,"^ 

with  little  stress  laid  upon  ceremonial  or  creed.  Creeds,  in  fact, 
are  likely  to  be  harmful: 

"Where  man  presumes  on  more  than  he  obeys, 
Then  straight  Religion  to  opinion  strays."^ 

Greville  recognizes  an  authority,  but  it  is  not  the  authority  of  the 
past  for  which  Davies'  reverence  is  evident  in  his  echoing  without 
challenge  its  pronouncements.  Greville's  authority  is  the  modern 
Protestant  one  of  individual  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures — 
infallible  book  substituted  for  infalUble  church.  "  If  thou  seek'st 
more  light,"  says  Lord  Brooke,  "search  His  written  Word."' 
The  whole  thoughtful  and  dignified  poem  is  permeated  with  a 
temper  much  more  modern  than  that  of  the  young  lawyer  who 
was  willing  to  accept  the  religion  of  the  Church  of  England  as  he 
found  it.  The  reUgion  of  "Nosce  Teipsum"  rests  upon  the 
past;  that  of  Greville's  "Treatise"  looks  toward  the  future. 

Another  treatise  deals  with  "Warres,"  and  still  another  with 
"Fame  and  Honour" — all  subjects  adapting  themselves  to  serious 
reflective  treatment.  But  the  poem  most  suitable  for  comparison 
with  "Nosce  Teipsum"  is  "A  Treatise  of  Human  Learning,"  the 
theme  of  which  is  almost  identical  with  that  of  the  first  part  of 
Davies'  poem."*  A  brief  study  will  show  not  only  how  like  this 
poem  is  to  "Nosce  Teipsum,"  but  how  natural  an  outlet  for 
reflection,  for  the  thinker  of  Davies'  time,  was  the  subject  of  the 
nature  and  qualities  of  the  human  mind,  chosen  as  theme  by  two 
of  the  really  memorable  poets  within  a  comparatively  short 
period. 

I  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  260. 
« Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  255. 
» Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  266. 
« Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  5. 


108  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Greville  first  discusses  the  deficiencies  of  knowledge,  which  is 
infinite  in  its  possibilities, 

"yet  satisfies  no  nainde 
Till  it  that  infinite  of  the  God-head  find." 

Just  as  Davies  recalls  the  fact  that 

"the  desire  to  know  first  made  men  fools "^ 

by  causing  them  to  taste  of  "that  fruite  forbid,"  so  Greville 
regards  secular  knowledge  as 

"  the  same  forbidden  tree, 
Which  man  lusts  after  to  be  made  his  Maker." 

The  sources  of  knowledge  are  next  analyzed,  as  in  "Nosce 
Teipsum" — sense,  which  is  apt  to  deceive;  imagination,  which  is 
apt  to  exaggerate;  memory,  which  may  be  "corrupted  with 
disguised  intelligence";  understanding,  which  contains  notions 
"of  general]  truths,"  that  however 

"have  such  a  staine 
From  our  corruption,  as  all  light  they  lose." 

All  these  defects  may  be  "supplyed  by  Sciences  and  Arts."  With 
this  statement  as  introduction,  the  writer  goes  on  to  enumerate 
and  discuss  the  various  branches  of  learning.  In  this  portion  of  the 
dissertation  Greville,  of  course,  differs  from  Davies,  who  spends  a 
much  greater  proportion  of  space  on  the  faculties  of  the  soul  and 
alludes  to  the  branches  of  knowledge  only  incidentally — this, 
because  he  is  engaged  in  showing  that  self-knowledge  is  the  only 
kind  worth  while.  Greville  shows  the  same  thing,  by  pointing 
out  the  weaknesses  of  the  forms  of  knowledge.  "High-prais'd 
Philosophic"  is 

"But  bookes  of  poesie,  in  prose  compiled, 
Farre  more  delightful  than  they  fruitfull  be." 

Music  fails,  in  that  it  cannot  teach 

"how  to  show 
No  weeping  voyce  for  losse  of  Fortune's  goods." 

'  Davies'  Works,  ed.  by  A.  B.  Grosart,  Vol.  I,  p.  15. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  109 

Geometry  falls  short,  because  it  cannot  instruct 

"how  to  measure 
What  is  enough  for  need,  what  fit  for  pleasure." 

Greville's  conclusion  is  the  vanitas  vanitatum  with  which  Davies 
began : 

"What  then  are  all  these  human  arts  and  lights? 
But  seas  of  errors?  in  whose  depths  who  sound 
Of  Truth  find  onely  shadowes,  and  no  ground. 

"Then  if  our  Arts  want  power  to  make  us  better, 
What  foole  will  thinke  they  can  us  wiser  make?" 

Man-made  arts  and  philosophies  can  never  arrive  at  the  knowledge 
of  God  which  has  been  stated  as  the  end  of  learning,  for  man's 
mind  itself  is  faulty  and  unable  by  its  powers  alone  to  grasp  the 
truth.  The  maturity  of  this  thought,  more  mature  even  than 
Bacon's  belief  that  the  "natural  reason"  was  sufficient  for  the 
comprehension  of  all  knowledge,^  is  an  advance  far  beyond  the 
childUke  idea  of  Davies,  who,  having  described  and  eulogized  the 
power  and  glory  of  the  human  mind,  concludes : 

"Our  Wit  is  given,  Ahnighty  God  to  know; 
Our  Will  is  given  to  love  Him,  being  known; 
But  God  could  not  be  known  to  us  below. 
But  by  His  workes  which  through  the  sense  are  shown."* 

Davies  merely  takes  for  granted  that  since  God  has  adorned  man 
"with  so  bright  a  mind,"  the  quality  of  the  mind  must  be  adequate 
for  every  use.  The  conclusion  is  the  same  at  which  Bacon  arrived 
by  the  road  of  inductive  reasoning  rather  than  a  priori.  Greville's 
indictment  of  the  powers  of  the  mind  is  a  challenge  to  both. 
Possibly,  however,  the  greater  maturity  of  grasp  evident  in  Lord 
Brooke  was  due  not  only  to  his  more  mature  years  but  to  the  fact 
that  he  had  for  years  been  intimate  with  Bacon  and  knew  his 
ideas  even  before  the  publication  of  the  "  Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing";^ while  Davies,  at  the  time  when  "Nosce  Teipsum"  was 
written,  probably  did  not  know  Sir  Francis,  and  could  not  have 
read  a  book  which  was  not  yet  published. 

» CroU,  the  Works  of  Fulke  Greville.       '  CroU,  p.  23. 
»  Davies'  Works,  Vol.  I,  p.  80. 


110  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Greville  continues  his  argument  with  a  plea  for  the  better 
regulation  of  man's  quest  for  knowledge,  so  that  learning  may  be 
adapted  to  the  improvement  of  conduct.  He  is  thoroughly 
utilitarian  in  his  view  of  study;  its  aim  is  "Ufe  and  actions," 
since  "God  made  all  for  use."  In  the  succeeding  definite  sugges- 
tions for  the  regulation  of  learning  by  the  supervising  power  of 
the  state,  Fulke  Greville  is  far  more  practical  than  Davies.  Re- 
Hgion,  law,  physics,  philosophy,  logic,  rhetoric,  poetry,  music, 
mathematics,  astronomy — all  are  to  be  reformed  from  subjects 
of  "idle  contemplation"  into  subjects  for  "the  practise  of  man's 
wisedome."  Where  Davies  was  purely  metaphysical  in  his 
discussion,  revelhng  in  philosophical  analysis  merely  as  such, 
content  to  fill  his  readers  with  reverence  for  that  wondrous  thing, 
the  human  soul,  Greville  never  forgets  for  a  moment  what  he 
feels  must  be  the  practical  issue  of  all  knowledge: 

"Onely  that  man  understands  indeed. 
And  well  remembers,  which  he  well  can  doe." 

The  mind,  however  marvellous,  cannot  say  to  hand  or  foot,  "I 
have  no  need  of  thee."  Although  Greville  is  much  more  the 
mature  philosopher  in  his  mode  of  formulating,  developing,  and 
presenting  his  thought,  Davies  is  more  truly  interested  in  thought 
for  its  own  sake. 

Yet  the  moral  exhortation  with  which  the  poems  close  are  not 
unhke,  albeit  the  vivid  simplicity  of  the  language  of  Davies  makes 
his  the  more  compelling  of  the  two. 

"And  thou  my  Soule,"  he  writes,  "which  turn'st  thy  curious  eye, 
To  view  the  beames  of  thine  owne  forme  divine; 
Know,  that  thou  canst  know  nothing  perfectly, 
While  thou  art  clouded  with  this  flesh  of  mine. 

"Take  heed  of  over-weening,  and  compare 

Thy  peacock's  feet  with  thy  gay  peacocke's  traine; 
Study  the  best,  and  highest  things  that  are, 
But  of  thy  selfe  an  humble  thought  retaine. 

"  Cast  downe  thy  selfe,  and  onely  strive  to  raise 
The  glory  of  thy  Maker's  sacred  Name."' 

'  Davies'  Works,  Vol.  I,  p.  116. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  111 

Greville's  summary  of  the  ethics  of  his  treatise  contains  ahnost  a 
duplicate  set  of  precepts: 

"  Man  may  well  professe 
To  studie  God,  Whom  he  is  borne  to  serve: 
Nature,  t'  admire  the  greater  in  the  lesse; 
Time,  but  to  learne;  our  selves  we  may  observe, 
To  humble  us:  others,  to  exercise 
Our  love  and  patience,  wherein  duty  lies." 

Making  due  allowance  for  the  difference  touched  upon,  it  is 
most  evident  that  two  poems,  the  purpose  of  each  of  which  is  to 
prove  that  all  knowledge  is  vain  except  as  it  is  moral  and  ethical 
in  its  intention  and  result,  are  alike  in  theme  and  spirit.  There  is 
in  Fulke  Greville,  too,  the  same  Hve  interest  as  Davies  shows  in 
the  infant  physical  science.  Allusions  to  right  hnes,  degrees  of 
latitude,  and  the  loadstone,  to  the  question  whether  the  heavens 
stand  still  or  move,  to  the  fact  that  the  Caspian  Sea  has  inlets 
but  no  outlet  and  is  therefore  salt,  to  the  atomic  theory,  and  to  the 
relation  of  the  sun  to  the  planets — all  these  show  a  mind  alert 
to  the  new  intelligence  that  was  beginning  to  animate  the  studies 
of  the  learned.  The  style  of  one  poet,  also,  is  as  simple  as  the 
other,  for  Greville's  thought  is  not  puzzling  to  trace.  Yet,  while, 
in  a  way,  the  wholesome,  virile  sanity  of  his  work  inspires  more 
admiration  and  provokes  more  thought  than  the  cheerful  ingenu- 
ousness of  Davies',  probably  because  it  is  more  applicable  to 
practical  life,  there  is  lacking  in  Greville  the  humanly  lovable 
quahty  that  makes  Davies  a  true  Elizabethan  and  that  endears 
even  to  the  modern  reader  his  quaint,  naive  expression  of  outworn 
ideas.  The  "Treatise  on  Human  Learning"  requires  much  more 
thought  for  the  following  of  its  argument  than  does  "Nosce 
Teipsum,"  probably  because,  while  its  language  is  simple,  its 
style  is  more  mature  and  dignified,  more  studied  and  thoughtful, 
than  that  of  Davies.  Moreover,  Greville  is  more  the  philosopher 
and  less  the  poet ;  he  thinks  more  than  he  sings.  The  independence 
of  his  thought  is  therefore  not  a  refutation,  as  it  might  otherwise 
seem  to  be,  of  our  proposition  that  the  poet-philosopher  does 
little  independent  thinking. 

Three  so  similar  poems  will  suffice,  for  a  tentative  proof  at 
least,  to  show  that  the  theme,  the  style,  the  spirit,  and  the  ethical 
intention  of  a  poet  philosophically  inclined  at  the  end  of  the 


112  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Elizabethan  age  were  likely  to  resemble  those  of  any  other  similarly 
incUned  poet,  and  that  these  respects  in  which  they  were  ahke 
were  consequently  results  of  the  time  that  gave  them  birth.  It  is 
in  the  things  that  express  poetic  individuality  that  these  poets 
differ.  That  which  makes  a  man  a  poet  is  not  reflected  from  his 
time  but  lies  within  himself.  It  is  only  the  philosopher  half  of  the 
poet-philosopher  that  is  an  echo.  That  Davies  was  essentially 
a  thinker,  though  not  an  independent  or  progressive  thinker,  is 
apparent  in  the  fact  that  he  wrote  neither  allegory,  like  Spenser, 
nor  lyric,  like  Campion,  nor  sonnet  sequence,  like  all  the  other 
poets  of  his  time,  nor  drama,  in  which  most  of  the  serious  poets, 
even  Lord  Brooke,  tried  to  rival  the  stage  playwrights,  nor  pastoral 
or  descriptive  poetry,  like  Draj-ton,  nor  historical  narrative,  like 
Daniel.  His  native  form  of  expression  was  none  of  these.  But 
that  he  was  essentiallj'^  a  poet  appears  equally  in  the  fact  that  his 
grave  reflections  found  outlet  in  vivid,  musical,  appealing  verse, 
poetic,  not  merely  metrical,  rather  than  in  serious  prose  like  that 
of  Hooker,  a  man  not  improbably  possessed  of  much  the  type  of 
mind  of  Davies,  or  in  the  vivacious  essay  form  adapted  by  Bacon 
from  Montaigne,  or  even  in  such  worse  than  prosaic  metrical 
meanderings  through  endless  pages  of  Mirums  and  Microcosms 
as  were  perpetrated  to  the  honor  of  God  and  the  human  soul  by 
Sir  John's  namesake,  John  Davies  of  Hereford. 

The  statement  was  made  at  the  beginning  of  this  section  that 
Davies  was  the  voice  of  the  end  of  a  period.  That  this  is  so 
appears  best  in  his  attitude  to  the  past  as  compared  with  that  of 
other  writers.  While  Bacon  derided  and  Greville  condemned  as 
pernicious  the  work  of  the  Schoolmen,  Davies  based  his  philosophy 
upon  scholastic  teaching.  The  sixteenth  century  was  the  closing 
epoch  of  that  phase  of  history  where  men's  lives  were  determined 
by  their  relations  to  the  church  and  to  religion.  The  normal, 
average  man  of  the  time  accepted  unquestioningly  the  creed 
ordained  for  him  by  the  powers  above  him,  whether  of  church  or 
state.  So  Davies  did.  His  sole  attempt  is  to  prove  the  truth  of 
what  he  either  beUeves  intuitively  or  accepts  with  creduUty  at 
the  hands  of  his  church.  In  this  respect  he  differs  from  Gre\dlle, 
whose  independence  of  reUgious  authority  belongs  to  the  opening, 
not  the  closing,  era;  and  from  Daniel,  who  neither  advocates  nor 
speculates  upon  any  religious  matter,  seeming  totally  uninter- 
ested therein. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  113 

To  look  at  a  succeeding  group  of  poets,  contemporaneous  with 
Davies  but  writing  much  later  than  he,  is  to  see  that  he  stood  at 
the  end  of  one  period  and  they  at  the  beginning  of  another.  His- 
torical ballads  and  narratives  free  of  morals,  in  the  "Barons' 
Wars"  and  "Agincourt";  idyllic  description,  written  for  sheer 
love  of  the  fair  English  country  and  of  beautiful  words,  in  the 
"Polyolbion";  graceful,  delicate  fairy-tales  and  pastorals,  guiltless 
of  allegorical  intention,  in  "Dowsabel,"  "Nimphidia,"  and  the 
"Muses'  Elizium" — these  were  Michael  Drayton's  contribution 
to  seventeenth  century  literature.  He  had  learned  in  the  school 
of  the  Elizabethans,  but  he  had  gone  ahead  of  his  teachers,  and 
become  the  modern  artist.  In  Drummond  of  Hawthornden, 
indeed,  the  Elizabethan  themes  of  love  and  religion  survive  in 
lyrics  of  strength  and  beauty;  but,  for  the  most  part,  those  things 
of  which  Greene  and  Sidney,  Southwell  and  Raleigh  wrote  with 
the  fresh  charm  of  youth  have  lost  their  novelty,  and  either  have 
become  conventional  from  much  repetition,  or  are  superseded 
by  ideas  more  sophisticated,  more  consciously  artistic,  more 
suited  to  a  worldly  wise  Stuart  court. 

Even  John  Donne,  versatile,  original,  loving  verbal  and  metrical 
experiment  as  much  as  ever  did  the  Elizabethans,  direct  and 
outspoken  as  were  any  of  them,  was  much  more  the  conscious 
artist  than  the  singer  who  sang  because  he  must.  The  EUzabethan 
cared  little  whether  the  thing  he  said  was  new  or  old,  since  to  him 
it  was  new.  But  Donne  cared  greatly  that,  if  the  matter  of  his 
verse  were  not  as  new  as  he  desired  to  have  it,  at  least  his  manner 
of  expressing  it  should  be  a  new  invention.  Donne  was  a  lyric, 
not  a  philosophical  poet ;  but  in  his  own  vein  he  showed  the  fresh 
independence  of  thought  that  did  not  mark  the  philosophy  of 
Davies.  On  the  other  hand,  the  spontaneity  and  freshness  of 
manner  that  make  the  platitudes  of  "Nosce  Teipsum"  delightful 
reading  were  sacrificed  by  Donne  at  the  altar  of  brilliant  expression 
— a  brilliance  often  enough  attained  to  repay  the  sacrifice,  and 
differentiating  Donne  from  his  predecessors.  Outside  the  drama, 
it  is  lyric  poetry  that  gives  opportunity  for  most  universal  appeal. 
Donne  the  lyrist  could  do  what  Davies  the  reflective  poet  could 
not.  The  strings  of  the  harp  of  life  still  vibrate  to  the  strains  of 
"I  long  to  talk  with  some  old  lover's  ghost,"  or  "So  let  us  melt 
and  make  no  noise,"  or  "Since  I  am  coming  to  that  holy  room." 
There  is  in  the  modern  reader's  attitude  to  such  poems  as  these 


114  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

none  of  the  half-indulgent,  half-curious  sympathy  with  which  the 
antiquary  approaches  a  monument  of  a  past  era.  His  gift  of 
condensation  of  a  great  thought  into  a  few  unusual  word-combina- 
tions separates  him  from  a  past  of  which  one  literary  temptation 
was  prolixity.  But  about  Davies  clings  unmistakably  the  atmos- 
phere of  his  century.  He  was  of  the  past ;  Donne  was  of  the  future. 
Standing  thus  at  the  end  of  an  era,  among  the  last  of  the  typically 
Elizabethan  poets,  Davies  embodied  in  his  verse  the  best  qualities 
developed  in  that  age.  The  culture  of  which  he  was  a  product 
could  go  no  farther  along  the  same  lines;  a  new  time,  with  a  new 
temper  and  new  interests,  must  produce  a  new  culture  and  a  new 
art.  But  the  vital  eagerness,  the  spontaneity  of  feeling,  the  direct 
simplicity,  the  appreciation  of  beauty  in  word  and  line  that  were 
the  gift  of  the  sixteenth  century  to  English  poetry,  are  all  exempli- 
fied in  such  a  passage  as  that  where  Davies  invokes  divine  aid 
for  his  poetic  adventure: 

"0  Light  which  mak'st  the  light,  which  makes  the  day! 
Which  setst  the  eye  without,  and  mind  within; 
Lighten  my  spirit  with  one  cleare  heavenly  ray;"^ 

or  in  his  introduction  to  the  description  of  the  five  senses: 

"  These  are  the  windows  through  the  which  she  views 
The  light  of  knowledge,  which  is  life's  loadstar : 
And  yet  while  she  these  spectacles  doth  use. 
Oft  worldly  things  seem  greater  than  they  are;"' 

or  in  the  lines  which  undoubtedly  furnished  the  background  for 
two  beautiful  lines  of  Tennyson : 

"  that  adamantine  chaine. 
Whose  golden  links,  effects  and  causes  be, 
And  which  to  God's  owne  chair  doth  fixt  remaine,"^ 

or  in  the  beautiful  Acclamation  which  forms  the  climax  to  the 
whole  fine  poem : 

"And  when  thou  think'st  of  her  eternitie, 

Thinke  not  that  Deathe  against  her  nature  is, 
Thinke  it  a  birth;  and  when  thou  goest  to  die, 
Sing  like  a  swan,  as  if  thou  went'st  to  blisse. 

»  Davies'  Works,  Vol.  I,  p.  16.  ^  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  54. 

2  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  65. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  115 

"And  if  thou,  like  a  child,  didst  feare  before, 

Being  in  the  darke,  where  thou  didst  nothing  see; 
Now  I  have  brought  thee  torch-hght,  feare  no  more ; 
Now  when  thou  diest,  thou  canst  not  hud-winkt  be."^ 

With  such  confidence  that  his  interpretation  of  the  soul  has 
reached  a  sympathetic  and  beUeving  public  did  Davies  close  his 
venture  into  the  world  of  the  spirit. 

As  Davies  stood  at  the  end  of  a  period  of  reverence  for  the 
past,  of  an  age  so  occupied  with  literary  and  artistic  adventure 
that  speculative  excursions  did  not  attract  thinkers  away  from 
the  traditional  beliefs  which  they  took  for  granted,  so  Pope  stood 
at  the  end  of  an  age  of  rationalistic  challenge  to  the  past,  an  age 
the  breath  of  whose  nostrils  was  speculative  inquiry.  Enough 
has  been  said  already  to  show  the  development  of  this  temper 
of  the  seventeenth  century  through  the  influence  of  growing 
interest  in  natural  science.  The  more  men  found  they  could 
explain,  by  the  effort  of  human  reason,  the  more  they 
wanted  to  explain.  If  the  old-time  theories  of  the  motion  of  the 
sun  and  the  shape  of  the  earth  were  proved  absurd,  how  was  it 
possible  not  to  suspect  of  an  equal  absurdity  the  even  more 
ancient  beHefs  in  heaven  and  hell?  Such  philosophies  as  those  of 
Hobbes  and  Descartes  left  little  room  for  a  creative,  over-ruling 
God.  And  when  it  was  proved  possible  to  formulate  the  laws  by 
which  seen  things  were  regulated,  a  proof  of  laws  governing  the 
unseen  seemed  equally  possible.  So  one  type  of  mind  dismissed 
as  irrational  all  the  ancient  faiths,  being  satisfied  with  a  mathe- 
matical axiom  instead  of  a  God;  and  another  type  of  mind, 
unwilling  to  destroy  without  building  up,  attempted  to  reason 
out  and  prove  the  hitherto  accepted  tenets  of  religion,  now  for 
the  first  time  doubted  and  subjected  to  an  interpretation  which 
would  bring  them  into  accord  with  physical  science.  On  middle 
ground  between  these  two  positions  stood  the  deists,  discarding 
all  the  traditions  of  "revelation"  and  substituting  for  them  a 
philosophical  religion,  without  creed  and  without  authority, 
looking  "through  Nature  up  to  Nature's  God."  The  attempt  to 
make  religion  and  science  agree,  commonly  associated  with  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  found  its  first  exponents  in 
the  leaders  of  the  so-called  orthodox  party  in  the  deist  controversy. 
The  "  Essay  on  Man,"  standing  at  the  end  of  the  period  of  contest, 

>  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  115-116. 


116  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

and  embodying  the  crystallized  thought  of  the  most  prominent 
deists,  may  be  taken  as  representative  of  the  kind  of  speculation 
by  which  rationalists,  whether  religious  or  merely  ethical,  sought 
to  establish  a  position  at  once  religious  and  rational,  spiritual 
and  scientific. 

Deist  theology  and  Pope's  presentation  of  it  may  be  left  for 
later  consideration.  It  is  sufficient  at  this  point  merely  to  notice 
that  Pope  was  as  fully  the  spokesman  for  the  end  of  a  speculative 
age,  expressing  in  his  Hnes  the  conclusions  to  which  its  speculation 
had  brought  it,  as  Davies  was  the  voice  of  a  credulous  age,  express- 
ing the  convictions  which  it  had  received  by  inheritance  and 
accepted  on  intuition.  In  relation  to  truth  itself,  one  writer  is  as 
conservative  as  the  other,  though  Pope  reasons  where  Davies 
believes.  That  Pope  wrote  a  speculative  poem  was  no  proof  of 
progressiveness  on  his  part,  in  an  age  when  everybody  speculated. 
The  fact  that  no  other  poet  contemporary  with  Pope  wrote  a 
similarly  speculative  poem  can  be  readily  explained  by  recalling 
that  Pope's  native  genius,  like  that  of  his  age,  was  the  genius  of 
satire,  and  that  his  venture  into  philosophy  was  due  to  outside 
influence.  No  philosopher  was  at  hand,  in  Dryden's  circle  of 
intimates,  to  turn  the  laureate's  mind  in  a  metaphysical  direction ; 
and  it  might  have  been  difficult  even  for  the  winning  Lord  Boling- 
broke  to  persuade  the  caustic  Swift  to  engage  in  any  form  of 
writing  to  which  he  did  not  feel  disposed. 

The  "Essay  on  Man,"  indeed,  has  the  distinction  of  being 
almost  the  only  successful  serious  poem  of  any  length,  in  this 
early  eighteenth  century,  that  is  not  imbued  with  the  spirit  of 
satire.  In  an  age  of  wit,  laughter  is  the  rule.  The  eighteenth 
century  writer  who  was  compelled  to  be  serious  by  what  he  saw 
and  thought  had  even  to  be  serious  under  the  mask  of  a  laugh — 
sometimes  a  bitter  laugh,  usually  a  scornful  one.  The  gentler 
irony  whose  outward  expression  was  an  indulgent  smile  lived  only 
in  the  sympathetic  reflections  of  Sir  Roger  and  the  good-humored 
merriment  of  the  worshiper  of  Belinda.  From  Dryden  onward, 
until  the  spell  was  broken  by  Thomson,  it  was  an  ironic  muse  that 
inspired  English  verse.  So,  apart  from  his  dramas,  Dryden  is 
best  remembered  for  the  sharp  political  satire  "Absalom  and 
Achitophel";  Matthew  Prior's  single  memorable  long  poem  is 
his  dissertation  on  the  relation  between  soul  and  body,  a  cheerfully 
humorous  parody  on  the  metaphysical  wanderings  of  the  philo- 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  117 

sophic  mind,  bearing  the  title  of  "Alma,  or  the  Progress  of  the 
Mind";  John  Gay's  most  delightfully  characteristic  work,  with 
the  exceptions  of  the  simple  ballads  and  the  "Beggar's  Opera," 
is  the  humorous  imitation  of  the  conventional  pastoral  known  as 
"The  Shepherd's  Week."  Prose,  too,  was  dominated  by  the 
spirit  of  satire.  To  think  of  the  early  eighteenth  century  is  at 
once  to  remember  the  "Spectator"  and  the  "Tale  of  a  Tub." 
That  Pope  departed  from  the  kind  of  writing  in  which  his  "Satires 
and  Epistles"  prove  him  such  a  master  was  due  to  the  versatility 
which  at  another  time  made  him  wholly  a  student  of  the  classics, 
as  it  made  him  now  wholly  a  philosopher.  So  long  as  he  chose  to 
be  a  philosopher  he  could  not  be  a  satirist.  No  man  could  be 
both  at  the  same  time,  for  philosophy  implies  a  mood  of  calm 
detachment,  and  satire  a  vehement  espousal  of,  or  antagonism  to, 
some  cause. 

With  this  single  exception  of  its  failm'e  to  reflect  the  satirical 
tendency  of  the  period,  the  "Essay  on  Man"  is  an  example  of 
the  finished  product  of  that  age  of  formality,  convention,  and 
polish  that  by  1740  was  about  to  give  place  to  a  wholly  new 
epoch  in  art  and  life.  There  is  less  apparent  effort  in  the  polish 
of  Pope's  style  than  in  that  of  many  another  of  his  contemporaries 
who  strove  for  formal  perfection.  The  high-flown  poetic  diction 
that  was  fashionable  seems  less  labored  and  more  spontaneous 
on  his  lips;  his  facile  pen  handles  the  stiff  couplet  with  more 
ease  and  grace.  He  is  unswerving  in  his  adherence  to  the 
poetic  orthodoxies  of  his  century,  yet  at  the  same  time  he  lifts 
those  orthodoxies  to  the  highest  plane  on  which  forms  so  anaemic 
can  breathe. 

A  few  examples  will  best  show  this  superiority  of  Pope  to  his 
contemporaries  in  the  handling  of  the  popular  verse  form.  For 
fairness,  the  examples  are  taken  from  poems  of  a  nature  equally 
serious  with  that  of  Pope,  and  represent  a  fair  average  of  the 
author's  work  in  each  case.  Listen  first  to  Dryden,  in  "Religio 
Laici" : 

"Thus  man  by  his  own  strength  to  Heaven  would  soar 
And  would  not  be  obliged  to  God  for  more. 
Vain,  wretched  creature,  how  art  thou  misled 
To  think  thy  wit  these  god-like  notions  bred! 
These  truths  are  not  the  product  of  thy  mind. 
But  dropped  from  Heaven,  and  of  a  nobler  kind."^ 

'  Dryden,  Religio  Laici,  11.  62-67. 


118  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Pope,  concluding  the  passage  that  reproves  man  for  assuming 
over-much — a  similar  idea  to  that  in  the  lines  just  quoted — is  not 
even  touched  by  a  shadow  of  the  commonplaceness  that  so  often 
quite  eclipsed  Dryden's  genius. 

*'Hope  humbly  then;  with  trembling  pinions  soar; 
Wait  the  great  teacher  Death,  and  God  adore."^ 

How  far  such  a  couplet  is  removed  from  that  in  which  Prior 
expresses  the  same  thought : 

"  In  vain  we  lift  up  our  presumptuous  eyes 
To  what  our  Maker  to  their  ken  denies."* 

A  little  farther  on  in  the  same  passage  Prior  reaches  a  higher 
poetic  level: 

"How  narrow  limits  were  to  wisdom  given! 
Earth  she  surveys;  she  thence  would  measure  Heaven: 
Through  mists  obscure,  now  wings  her  tedious  way: 
Now  wanders  dazzled  with  too  bright  a  day; 
And  from  the  summit  of  a  pathless  coast, 
Sees  infinite,  and  in  that  sight  is  lost."^ 

But  even  this  is  surpassed  in  skill  by  the  lines  in  which  Pope 
describes  man's  imperfection  of  knowledge : 

"Plac'd  on  this  isthmus  of  a  middle  state, 
A  being  darkly  wise  and  rudely  great : 

Alike  in  ignorance,  his  reason  such. 
Whether  he  thinks  too  little  or  too  much: 

Sole  judge  of  truth,  in  endless  error  hurl'd; 
The  glory,  jest,  and  riddle  of  the  world!"' 

Other  centuries  than  the  eighteenth  might  have  difficulty  in 
producing  a  line  more  complete  both  in  thought  and  expression 
than  the  last  one. 

Perhaps  the  closing  lines  of  Addison's  famous  description  of 
Marlborough*  come  as  near  to  real  poetic  power  as  any  eighteenth 

1  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  I,  11.  91-92. 

»  Prior,  Poetical  Works,  Vol.  II,  pp.  llS-119. 

•  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  II,  11.  3-18. 

*  Ward's  English  Poets,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  5. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  119 

century  couplet — those  lines  where,  rising  above  his  usual  rather 
mediocre  verse,  he  sees  a  vision  of  an  angel,  who 

"pleas'd  th'  Almighty's  orders  to  perform. 
Rides  in  the  whirlwind,  and  directs  the  storm." 

But  Pope  has  a  couplet  of  similar  dignity,  more  beautiful  and  more 
thought  provoking: 

"On  life's  vast  ocean  diversely  we  sail, 
Reason  the  card,  but  Passion  is  the  gale; 
Nor  God  alone  in  the  still  calm  we  find, 
He  mounts  the  storms,  and  walks  upon  the  wind,"^ 

From  a  poet  who  was  oftener  rhetorical  than  poetic,  such  lines  are 
doubly  impressive.  A  more  thorough  comparative  survey  of 
verse  written  in  the  heroic  couplet  would  serve  to  show  that  in 
the  use  of  the  poetic  medium  characteristic  of  his  time  Pope  was 
approached  by  none  of  his  contemporaries.  Standing  at  the  end 
of  an  epoch,  he  represented  the  best  art  of  the  style  peculiar  to 
that  epoch. 

The  didactic  habit  of  mind  that  modern  literature  inherited 
from  the  middle  ages  had  by  no  means  worn  itself  out  during  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  The  mission  of  art  was  still 
to  teach,  as  it  was  to  continue  to  be,  in  the  minds  of  many  writers 
and  readers,  till  a  good  two  centuries  after  the  time  of  Pope. 
The  particular  lesson  which  Dry  den  had  to  impart  was,  as  became 
a  laureate  in  those  days  of  patronage,  loyal  adherence  to  whatever 
might  be  the  powers  that  were.  Historical  poems,  showing  the 
power  and  glory  of  the  ruling  monarch  and  the  good  fortune  of 
his  subjects,  and  religious  poems,  defending  the  faith  of  whichever 
church  Dryden  adhered  to  at  the  time  of  writing,  alike  urged  upon 
their  readers  the  divine  right  of  rulers.  An  age  of  satire  of  course 
was  a  didactic  age;  without  a  lesson  to  teach,  satire  would  have 
no  excuse  for  being.  Even  Gay's  lively  and  laughable  epistles, 
eclogues,  and  elegies  carried  with  them  the  criticism  that  points 
out  evils  to  correct  them.  Solomon's  "Vanity,"  as  transformed 
by  Prior,  is  one  long  preachment,  without  the  beauty  of  language 
and  the  originality  of  thought  that  Koheleth  possessed.  Death, 
immortality,  sin,  salvation,  careless  worldliness — these  were  the 
subjects  that  in  the  minor  poets  replaced  the  love  songs  of  Sidney 

1  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  II,  11.  107-110. 


120  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

and  of  Lovelace.  Weighty  gravity  of  exhortation  reached  its 
climax  in  the  only  important  venture  into  verse  made  by  Johnson  ;i 
while  Young-  fairly  revels  in  the  gloom  and  grief,  meditation  upon 
which  he  thinks  must  be  provocative  of  true  morality. 

Consequently,  if  Pope  had  been,  in  such  an  undertaking  as  the 
"Essay,"  anything  but  didactic,  he  would  have  seemed  as 
unnatural  and  artificial  as  a  didactic  poet  would  seem  in  the 
twentieth  century.  Paradoxically,  the  product  of  an  artificial 
school  of  literature  is  natural  only  when  he  is  artificial.  And  the 
conventional  morality  of  the  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
artificial  enough,  looked  at  beside  their  cheerful  participation  in 
the  social  life  which  they  satirized,  beside  their  eager  pursuit  of 
the  vanities  whose  worship  they  deplored.  They  were  abstract 
moralities  that  Pope  and  his  contemporaries  discoursed  upon. 
As  far  as  the  "Essay"  is  concerned.  Pope's  preaching  was  only 
as  regarded  opinion.  He  was  urgent  that  his  readers  should 
think  properly;  the  kind  of  interest  in  their  conduct  that  is 
manifest  in  such  a  sturdy,  wholesome  writer  as  Fulke  Greville  is 
quite  absent. 

For  example,  the  errors  against  which  Pope  warned  his  readers 
are  entirely  those  of  mind  and  soul,  not  of  practice.  Man  is  not 
to  complain,  blaming  Heaven  for  his  imperfection;  he  is  to  trust 
the  absolute  justice  and  wisdom  of  the  "disposing  Power"  accord- 
ing to  whose  disposal  "Whatever  is  is  right."  He  must  not  allow 
in  himself  too  lofty  a  pride,  remembering  that  he  is  only  one 
small  part  in  a  great  whole.  He  is  to  believe  that  happiness  lies 
only  in  virtue — but  the  virtue  which  Pope  recommends  remains  a 
very  abstract  quality,  quite  different  from  the  specific  ones  that 
Davies  and  Greville  admired.  Man  is  not  to  make  the  mistake 
of  thinking  that  evil  has  its  source  in  God,  though  as  to  its  actual 
origin  Pope  suggests  no  satisfactory  theory: 

"What  makes  all  physical  and  moral  ill? 
There  deviates  Nature,  and  here  wanders  Will. 
God  sends  not  ill,  if  rightly  understood."^ 

In  a  very  few  passages  there  is  a  hint  that  Pope  realized  conduct 
as  the  test  of  virtue  of  thought.     After  his  discussion  of  the 

^  Samuel  Johnson,  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,  1749. 

2  Edward  Young,  Night  Thoughts,  1742-44. 

3  Essay  <m  Man,  Epistle  IV,  11.  1 1 1-1 13. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  121 

origins  of  government  and  of  religion,  he  has  a  momentary  flash 
of  clear,  practical  vision  : 

"For  forms  of  government  let  fools  contest; 
Whate'er  is  best  administered  is  best : 
For  modes  of  faith  let  graceless  zealots  fight; 
His  can't  be  wrong  whose  life  is  in  the  right."^ 

And,  of  course,  in  the  portion  of  Epistle  IV  which  proves  that 
happiness  is  virtue,  it  would  have  been  difficult  for  the  most 
abstract  writer  to  exemplify  virtue  except  concretely.  The  value 
of  right  conduct  as  the  test  of  worth  is  here  contrasted  with 
worldly  wealth  and  position.     The  famous  couplets, 

"Honor  and  shame  from  no  condition  rise; 
Act  well  your  part:  there  all  the  honor  lies,"* 

and 

"What  can  ennoble  sots,  or  slaves,  or  cowards? 
Alas!  not  all  the  blood  of  all  the  Howards,"^ 

are  certainly  practical  enough  to  deserve  their  frequent  quotation. 
But  a  significant  contrast  on  the  last  page  of  the  "Essay" 
perhaps  is  typical  of  Pope's  real  standard  of  virtuous  conduct. 
In  an  eloquent  passage  on  the  development  of  self-love  into 
social  love  he  expands  the  ageless  theme,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself,"  summing  up  an  approximate  perfection  as  a 
condition  where  "height  of  bliss"  is  "height  of  charity."  Then 
with  what,  if  one  recalls  the  story  of  Bolingbroke,  is  a  lamentable 
anti-climax,  but  in  language  much  less  perfunctory  than  the 
foregoing.  Pope  describes  the  man  who  for  the  time  being  was  his 
ideal  of  excellence,  in  words  that  show  his  actual  ideal  of  virtuous 
conduct.     "Teach  me,"  he  cries,  "like  thee, 

"To  fall  with  dignity,  with  temper  rise; 
Form'd  by  thy  converse,  happily  to  steer 
From  grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to  severe: 
Correct  with  spirit,  eloquent  with  ease. 
Intent  to  reason,  or  polite  to  please."* 

Selfless  love  to  one's  neighbor — it  is  the  highest,  the  still  unattained 
practical  ideal  of  the  ages.  But  versatility,  correctness,  easy 
eloquence,    politeness — these    are   superficial   ideals,   embodying 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  303-306.  ^  75^^,^  Epistle  IV,  II.  193-94. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  11.  215-16.  *  Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  11.  378-82. 


122  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

petty  virtues  of  mind  and  manners,  not  great  ideals  of  soul  and 
spirit.  They  were  ideals  attainable  and  attained  by  a  Stuart  or 
a  Georgian  court,  by  a  Bolingbroke,  by  a  Chesterfield,  by  Pope 
himself.  By  the  distance  between  the  two  standards  may  be 
measured  the  concrete  practicaHty  of  Pope's  ethics. 

A  by-product  of  this  eighteenth  century  love  for  the  abstract 
was  the  failure  of  the  poets  of  the  period  to  illuminate  their 
abstract  themes  with  concrete  examples  or  similes.  Their  satire, 
of  course,  was  objective  necessarily.  But  when  they  were  not 
writing  satire  they  were  analyzing  the  human  soul  or  treating 
some  other  topic  of  a  generalized  and  ethical  nature  and  they  were 
content  to  think  abstractly.  The  homely  illustrations  and 
similes  which  enhven  the  pages  of  Ehzabethans — childhke  hearts, 
in  the  midst  of  an  objective  world — are  absent,  or,  if  present,  are 
couched  in  such  high-flown  and  stilted  language  as  to  lose  the 
homeliness  which  makes  much  of  the  charm  of  Davies.  The 
planets  and  their  motions,  the  forbidden  fruit  of  the  tree,  a  few 
famiUar  and  usually  tame  animals,  a  BibUcal  or  classical  character 
or  two — these  are  reiterated  to  the  verge  of  weariness  in  any 
anthology  of  the  period.  More  than  his  contemporaries  Pope 
made  use  of  concrete  figures,  sketching  here  and  there  a  vivid 
word  picture  in  illustration  of  his  abstract  theme.  The  im^e 
of  the  lamb  which 

"crops  the  flow'ry  food, 
And  licks  the  hand  just  raised  to  shed  his  blood  "^ 

has  the  pathos  Pope  is  said  to  lack.  The  much  misused  poor 
Indian  is  described  with  a  sympathy  astonishing  in  so  untraveled 
and  unimaginative  a  person  as  Pope.  Allusions  to  contemporary 
personages  must  have  made  the  poem  interesting  to  current 
readers.  The  results  of  whimsical  observation  of  men  and  manners 
are  focused  in  such  telling  lines  as, 

"So,  when  small  humors  gather  to  a  gout, 
The  doctor  fancies  he  has  driven  them  out."* 

But,  taken  all  in  aU,  the  "Essay,"  Uke  its  contemporary  serious 
poems,  betrays  very  little  care  on  the  part  of  its  writer  to  please  a 
reading  public,  if  any  such  existed,  interested  in  facts  rather  than 
ideas.      In  an  age  of  reason,  a  clearly  reasoned  generalization 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  U.  3-84.  *  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  160-161. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  123 

would  compel  as  much  attention  as  the  same  work  cheapened  by 
an  attempt  to  popularize  it  with  homely  figures. 

Nor  is  there  in  the  "Essay"  any  trace  of  the  emotional  appeal 
by  virtue  of  which  poetry  usually  wins  the  popular  affection. 
This  absence  of  emotion  might  be  ascribed  to  the  nature  of  Pope's 
subject,  which  gave  little  opportunity  for  the  expression  of  feeling. 
But  he  was  not  alone  in  producing  verse  innocent  of  passion. 
An  age  in  which  life  flowed  gaily  along  on  the  surface,  in  the 
pretense  that,  because  the  depths  below  were  black  and  perilous 
and  unpleasant  to  contemplate,  there  were  no  depths  there; 
an  age  in  which  existence  was  rounded,  not  with  a  sleep,  but  with 
a  game  of  cards;  an  age  in  which  a  great  passion  was  a  thing  to 
be  hidden  as  if  indecent,  or  felt  only  to  be  suppressed;  an  age  in 
which  love  was  dependent  on  dowry  and  poetry  on  patronage — 
such  an  age  was  not  likely  to  find  utterance  in  emotional  verse. 
If  the  poet  had  an  idea  of  more  or  less  brilliance,  if  he  had  in  his 
ear  the  sound  of  rhyme  and  meter,  if  he  had  the  gift  of  words 
clearly  and  cleverly  to  express  his  thought,  there  was  no  need  for 
his  heart  to  beat  red.  The  spontaneous  emotion  that  alone  makes 
poetry  poetic,  and  which  had  sung  itself  so  tunefully  through 
Elizabethan  pages,  waited  to  be  rediscovered  by  Burns  and  Words- 
worth. It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  line  where  Dryden  was  not 
cool  and  dispassionate;  Gay  and  Prior,  amused  but  not  incensed 
at  the  follies  they  derided,  hoped  that  the  satirical  criticism  would 
strike  home,  yet  showed  none  of  the  reformer's  ardor;  the  love- 
poems  of  the  time  were  as  artificial  as  the  beauty  of  the  ladies 
who  presumably  inspired  them.  The  nearest  approach  to  that 
sincerity  of  expression  in  which  one  can  feel  the  emotion  dominating 
the  poet's  interest  in  his  verse  form  and  often,  consequently, 
improving  it,  is  to  be  found  in  the  musical  ballads  of  Gay,  and,  at 
the  other  extreme,  in  the  bitterly  passionate  satire  of  Swift. 
But,  however  sincere,  neither  cheerful  narrative  nor  sharp  invective 
can  be  said  to  represent  a  true  poetic  emotion. 

Pope,  then,  is  like  his  contemporaries  in  the  lack  of  emotion 
which  is  one  of  the  explanations  of  his  obvious  lack  of  poetic 
quality.  But  so  far  as  mere  style  is  concerned,  he  is  raised  far 
above  the  other  writers  of  his  time  by  his  gift  of  epigrammatic 
expression.  His  epigrams  do  not  make  him  the  better  poet,  but 
they  do  make  him  a  writer  of  verse  better  remembered  and  more 
often  quoted  than  any  other  verse  of  its  kind.      It  would  be 


124  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

impertinence  to  cite  the  lines  that  live  still  on  the  tongues  of 
people  who  never  heard  of  Alexander  Pope.  The  eternally 
springing  Hope,  the  frightful  monster  Vice,  the  child 

"Pleas'd  with  a  rattle,  tickled  with  a  straw, "^ 

the  bubble  joy  which  laughs  in  Folly's  cup,  the  worldly  rewards 
by  which 

"at  sixty  are  undone 
The  virtues  of  a  saint  at  twenty-one, "^ 

the  honest  man  whom  so  many  succeeding  poets  have  honored 
as  the  noblest  work  of  God — familiar  allusions  like  these,  woven 
into  the  fabric  of  our  commonplace  conversation,  are  the  best 
proof  of  the  vital  power,  not  poetic  but  epigrammatic,  that 
animated  Pope's  work.  No  one  quotes  Dry  den;  only  the  ballad- 
singer  and  his  audience  remember  black-eyed  Susan;  Lilliput, 
indeed,  remains  one  of  the  enchanted  lands  of  childhood,  but  the 
verses  of  its  creator  are  forgotten.  But  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a 
person  of  average  intelligence  who  has  not  at  some  time,  taught 
by  experience  the  truth  of  the  epigram,  echoed,  humorously  or 
wistfully,  the  line, 

"Man  never  is,  but  always  to  be,  blest."^ 

In  all  the  literary  qualities,  then,  in  which  a  poet  could  be 
controlled  by  the  spirit  and  fashion  of  his  time.  Pope  resembled 
his  earlier  contemporaries.  He  and  they  ahke  adhered  to  the 
most  formal  and  stilted  of  English  verse  measures;  he  and  they 
alike  preached  an  abstract  morality,  presented  abstractly;  he 
and  they  were  guiltless  of  spontaneous  emotion.  But  in  those 
elements  that  were  the  expression  of  individual  genius,  rising 
transcendent  above  the  dead  level  of  the  average  Augustan  poet, 
the  writer  of  the  "Essay"  was  a  bright  particular  star  in  a  firma- 
ment full  of  dull  and  dusty  luminaries.  The  light  of  his  star  was, 
perhaps,  a  metallic  glitter  rather  than  a  warm  and  sympathetic 
glow;  the  brilliance  of  polished  couplet  and  clean-cut  epigram 
was  dimmed  by  the  flooding  radiance  of  the  poets  of  the  Revolu- 
tion; nevertheless  the  star  still  shines. 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  1.  276.  ^  j^id.^  Epistle  I,  1.  96. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  11.  183-84. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  125 

But  Pope  was  above  his  contemporaries,  rattier  than  ahead  of 
them.  So  essentially  was  he  a  product  of  his  time  that  there  was 
in  him  none  of  the  pointing  forward  to  a  later  epoch  than  his  own 
that  appears  in  other  mid-eighteenth  century  poets.  Young  and 
Thomson,  Gray  and  Akenside  were,  in  all  the  externals,  writers 
of  the  old  school.  The  formal  measure,  the  stilted  poetic  diction, 
the  love  of  abstractions  all  Unger  in  the  "Night  Thoughts"  and 
the  "Seasons,"  the  "Elegy"  and  the  "Pleasures  of  the  Imagina- 
tion." But  long  before  the  period  called  revolutionary  there  was 
stirring  in  the  hearts  of  men  gifted  with  the  vision  of  the  poet  a 
spirit  of  new  Ufe,  groping  for  the  unseen  realities  that  were  to  be 
found,  not  by  reason,  but  by  contact  with  life.  The  world  waken- 
ed, as  the  age  of  Pope  passed  into  the  age  of  Johnson,  to  the  idea 
which  revolutionized  politics,  social  feehng,  and  art — the  idea 
that  one  individual  is  worth  a  thousand  generalizations,  and  that 
nature,  human  or  otherwise,  is  to  be  known  not  by  analyzing  her 
processes  but  by  living  in  contact  with  her  realities.  And  con- 
temporary with  the  social  and  artistic  awakening  came  the  revival 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  reacting  against  the  wearisome 
pros  and  cons  of  the  threadbare  deistic  controversy,  calling  men 
to  a  realization  of  their  own  emotional  possibilities,  and  finding 
expression  either  in  enthusiasm  for  the  new  evangel  of  the  Wesleys 
or  in  renewed  vigor  within  the  ancient  church  from  whose  altars 
"the  pomp  of  method  and  of  art"  had  driven  the  pioneers  of 
methodism. 

Thus  Young,  who  represented  rather  the  reUgious  than  the 
social  change  of  impulse,  and  who  sought  to  supply  the  gap  left 
by  the  absence  of  orthodox  religion  in  the  "Essay,"  turned  the 
didactic  spirit  of  his  predecessors  into  a  weightily  moral  and 
evangelically  religious  channel — so  moral  and  so  religious,  that 
more  than  a  century  later  a  worthy  editor^  writes  with  unconscious 
humor  that  "Night  Thoughts"  eloquently  inculcates  "those 
great  Christian  doctrines  which  lie  at  the  foundation  of  pure 
morals  and  sound  religion" — as  truly  Victorian  a  standard  for 
an  art  value  as  Young's  own  strictly  orthodox  code  and  creed. 
A  defense  of  deism  might,  according  to  Young's  code,  be  illuminat- 
ed by  flashes  of  wit;  but  an  apologetic  for  Christianity,  as  grave 
as  any  of  Wesley's  sermons  and  less  eloquent,  must  be  character- 

1  James  Robert  Boyd,  1854. 


126  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

ized  only  by  decent  gravity.  "The  new  class  of  readers  wanted 
something  more  congenial  to  the  teaching  of  their  favorite  min- 
isters"^ than  a  system  of  abstract  philosophy.  Young's  popularity 
in  his  own  time  was  an  index  of  the  interests  and  desires  of  his 
audience,  during  years  when  disgust  with  the  hypocrisy  and 
corruption  of  Walpole's  England  was  arousing  a  passion  for 
spiritual  realities.  The  equal  popularity  of  Thomson  showed  the 
other  and  more  important  element  of  a  new  life  soon  to  quicken 
in  the  mind  of  England.  For  with  Thomson  began  the  use  in 
modern  English  poetry  of  the  description  of  natural  beauty  for 
its  own  sake,  and  not  for  the  pointing  of  a  moral.  Thomson's 
appreciation  of  nature  was  the  more  remarkable  as  it  preceded 
by  so  long  a  time  the  work  of  the  French  Encyclopedists,  and  the 
inspiration  of  the  German  romanticists. 

Once  the  love  of  natural  beauty  found  utterance,  it  was  easy 
for  other  poets  to  follow  the  way  shown  by  the  writer  of  "The 
Seasons."  That  Pope  did  not  so  follow  shows  not  only  his  own 
artificial  bent,  but  his  faithful  adherence  to  the  literary  tenets 
which  satisfied  the  first  three  decades  of  the  eighteenth  centmy. 
He  need  not  have  been  a  pioneer  in  art  to  evince  some  interest 
in  the  beauty  of  nature  which  Thomson  had  pointed  out.  But 
his  pages  are  as  bare  of  allusions  to  concrete,  external  nature  as 
they  are  of  the  creed  of  which  Young  deplored  the  absence.  In 
the  accepted  conventional  verbiage,  Gray  still  wrote  of  the  Muse 
and  the  "rosy-bosom'd  Hours"  and  the  "Attic  warbler"  and 
"reddening  Phoebus"  lifting  "his  golden  fire";  but  with  the 
formaUties  of  poetic  diction  alternated  exquisite  "showers  of 
violets,"  lovely  allusions  to  "rugged  elms"  or  the  "old  fantastic 
roots"  of  the  beech,  and  graphic  hints  of  intimacy  with  "moping 
owl"  or  twittering  swallow,  or  droning  beetle.  Akenside  still 
referred  to  the  sun  as  "the  radiant  ruler  of  the  year"  and  called 
upon  his  lyre  to  awake;  but  he  could  picture  the  green  before  a 
threshold  decked 

"with  cowslips  pale, 
Primrose  and  purple  lychnis,  .  .  . 
.  .  .  and  .  .  .  shelving  walls 
With  honeysuckle  covered."^ 

^  Stephen,  English  Literature  and  Society  in  the  18th  Century,  p.  153. 
*  From  Fcrr  a  Grotto,  Ward's  British  Poets,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  350. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  127 

Perhaps  Pope  never  saw  these  things;  presumably  he  did  not 
love  them ;  certainly  he  never  wrote  of  them.  Like  Gray,  Aken- 
side  could  picture  the  humble  home  where  the  village-dame, 
hearing  the  curfew,  remembers  as  she  watches  her  children  at 
play  that 

"At  morn  their  father  went  abroad; 
The  moon  is  sunk,  and  deep  the  road; 
She  sighs,  and  wonders  at  his  stay."^ 

For  Pope  the  village-dame,  the  ploughman,  the  "mute  inglorious 
Milton"  did  not  exist;  Twickenham  was  far  away  from  Stoke 
Pogis.  The  poetry  of  the  future  was  the  poetry  of  the  beauty  of 
tree  and  stream  and  cloud;  its  philosophy  was  the  message  of 
brotherhood,  equality,  the  value  of  the  individual,  however 
humble.     Pope's  poetry.  Pope's  philosophy  were  of  the  past. 

The  past  of  which  Pope  was  both  index  and  climax  was  a  past 
of  patterned  formality.  The  past  which  created  Tennyson  was  a 
past  of  revolt  against  all  patterns.  Into  the  stiff,  outworn  old 
wineskins  was  poured  the  new  wine  from  the  vineyards  of  France. 
A  precedent  became  a  chain.  To  conventionality  of  form  suc- 
ceeded infinite  variety.  A  Scotch  ploughman  sang  across  his 
fields,  and  the  music  of  his  verse  echoed  into  the  souls  of  lyric 
poets  till  their  words  began  to  sing.  No  longer  was  the  stanza 
form  a  labored,  metallic  mould  to  imprison  a  conventional  idea. 
It  was  a  tune  fitly  framed  to  carry  grief  or  joy.  As  many  as  were 
the  complex  emotions  of  rejoicing,  suffering  humanity,  so  many  J 
must  be  the  lyric  forms.  Blank  verse  regained  the  grace  and  | 
color,  the  sweep  of  rhythm  and  the  aptness  to  express  thought  \. 
with  which  Shakespeare  and  Milton  had  animated  it,  and  of  \. 
which  the  users  of  the  couplet  had  robbed  it.  The  sonnet  came 
into  its  own,  assuming  under  the  touch  of  Wordsworth  and 
Shelley  a  flexibility  and  a  dignity  that  not  even  the  Elizabethan 
sonnet  had  possessed.  The  elegance  of  poetic  diction,  high  flown 
and  stilted,  vanished;  words  suitable  for  poetry  were  found  to  be 
no  different  from  the  words  that  made  up  "the  real  language  of 
men."  For  poetry,  newly  become  the  musical  medium  of  emotion, 
ceased  to  depend  on  form. 

More  important  than  the  transformation  of  the  form  of  poetry  ,i 
was  the  change  in  its  spirit.     The  poet  no  longer  sought  to  admon- 

»  From  On  the  Winter  Solstice,  1740,  Ibid.,  p.  347. 


128  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

ish;  rather  he  sought  to  inspire.  The  didactic  spirit  that  looked 
on  poetry  only  as  a  vehicle  for  morality  disappeared  gradually 
before  the  spirit  of  the  artist  whose  art  by  its  very  beauty  conveyed 
a  moral  impulse.  Much  of  the  teacher  clung  about  Wordsworth, 
but  his  lessons  of  uplifting  contact  with  nature  and  of  sympathy 
with  humanity  were  couched  not  as  precepts  but  as  graphic 
pictures  or  narratives,  the  contagious  emotion  of  which  aroused 
the  feelings  he  longed  to  awaken  in  his  audience.  The  teacher  as 
prophet  still  lingered  in  Shelley;  but  with  the  work  of  Keats, 
English  poetry  arrived  at  the  goal  of  poetry  for  the  sake  of  truth 
and  beauty.  Verse  that  did  not  express  or  inspire  a  genuine 
emotion  was  seen  not  to  be  poetry.  The  cold  ethics  of  the  Moral 
Sense  school  gave  place  to  religious  fervor,  as  emotional  in  com- 
parison with  Swift's  caustic  morality  or  Pope's  casuistic  optimism 
as  were  Burns 's  love  lyrics  in  contrast  with  those  of  Matthew 
Prior.  For  it  was  emotion  that  lay  at  the  heart  of  the  new  poetry, 
an  emotion  stirred  in  one  poet  by  a  cuckoo's  song  or  a  tuft  of 
primrose,  in  another  by  a  wind  moaning  ''grief  too  sad  for  song," 
in  another  by  the  perfumed  splendor  of  a  summer  night,  numbing 
his  drowsy  senses  with  its  melody. 

In  subject  matter,  too,  poetry  was  altered  in  the  half  century 
that  preceded  Tennyson.  Abstractions  were  no  longer  interesting 
in  a  world  where  life  was  real.  Why  wander  into  the  infinities 
of  space  or  seek  to  define  the  indefinable  when  there  was  at  hand 
a  world  full  of  concrete  realities — of  woods  and  mountains,  of 
lakes  and  streams,  of  summer  rains  and  winter  snows,  of  stars  and 
clouds  and  tempests,  of  loving,  suffering  men  and  women?  So 
Goldsmith  wrote  of  the  humble  happiness  of  the  Irish  peasant 
and  Burns  of  the  toil-worn  cotter;  Cowper,  even  before  Words- 
worth, found  beauty  in 

"the  meadows  green, 
Though  faded;  and  the  lands,  where  lately  waved 
The  golden  harvest,  of  a  mellow  brown;" 

and  Blake  made  exquisite  poetry  from  the  evening  star,  scattering 
"silver  dew  on  every  flower,"  and  from  the  sunflower,  "weary  of 
time,"  counting  "the  steps  of  the  sun."  Jean  and  Lucy  were  the 
inspiration  of  the  new  love  lyrics,  replacing  the  Daphnes  and 
Chioes  of  the  old.  "The  simple  annals  of  the  poor"  supplied 
material  for  the  poet  of  the  commonplace  who  could  find  "a  tale 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  129 

in  everything."  The  new  poetry  did  not  satirize  the  vices  and 
follies  of  the  rich  and  groat ;  instead,  it  held  up  to  admiration  the 
sturdy  virtues  of  the  poor  and  humble,  even  while  it  implored 
sympathy  for  their  hardships.  For  poetry  had  become  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  new  democratic  impulse,  of  the  new  social 
sympathy.  In  Shelley,  denunciation  of  present  ills  was  as  harsh 
as  the  severest  satires  of  the  time  of  Pope;  but  Shelley's  denuncia- 
tion was  direct,  not  veiled,  and  there  was  no  wit  nor  laughter 
in  his  "wail  for  the  world's  wrong."  Yet  the  very  abiUty  by 
which  he  sounded  the  deep  places  of  despair,  as  Dry  den  and  Swift, 
Gaj^  and  Prior,  with  minds  upon  more  trivial  evils,  could  not  do, 
gave  him  the  capacity  for  glorious  visions  of  the  future  which  they 
could  not  see. 

At  the  end  of  such  a  time,  a  time  when  poetry  had  been  set 
free  from  the  trammels  of  conventionality,  when  reason  had  been 
superseded  by  emotion,  when  nature  and  humanity  had  triumphed 
over  abstractions  as  suitable  material  for  the  poet,  when  great 
realities  had  replaced  trivial  superficialities  as  the  dominant 
interests  in  men's  minds — at  the  end  of  such  a  time  came  Tennyson. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  this  discussion  concerns  the  earlier 
Tennj^son,  the  poet  of  "In  Memoriam,"  not  the  maturer  poet  of 
the  later  "Idylls."  Like  Davies  and  Pope,  this  earlier  Tennyson 
shared  with  the  poets  preceding  him  the  best  of  the  quaUties 
developed  in  the  age  of  which  he  was  the  heir. 

It  was  a  period  when,  because  of  the  contagion  of  German 
philosophy,  every  poet  was  inclined  to  be  philosophical.  It  is 
difficult  to  compare  the  philosophy  of  Wordsworth  with  that  of 
Tennyson,  because  Wordsworth's  reflections  upon  abstract 
truths  are  presented  by  means  of  the  concrete  images  of  nature 
poetry,  rather  than  by  direct  analysis  and  introspective  meditation, 
as  are  Tennyson's.  Wordsworth's  philosophy  is  usually  implicit; 
he  makes  few  direct  metaphysical  ventures,  and  none  so  ambitious 
as  Tennyson's  proof  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  It  is  in  the 
daintiest  of  spring  lyrics^  that  "Nature's  holy  plan"  is  revealed; 
it  is  from  the  story  of  Lucy-  that  the  power  of  the  great  teacher 
"to  kindle  or  restrain"  is  to  be  learned;  it  is  through  the  simple 
prattle  of  "a  little  cottage  girl"^  that  Wordsworth's  feeling  as  to 

*  Li7ies  Written  in  Early  Spriiig,  Globe  ed.  of  Wordsworth,  p.  83. 

*  The  Education  of  Nature,  Ibid.,  p.  115. 
'  We  are  Seven,  Ibid.,  p.  73. 


130  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

immortality  is  most  convincingly  expressed.  Nevertheless,  in  all 
the  pages  of  ''In  Memoriam"  there  is  reached  no  surer  faith  than 
Wordsworth's  "faith  that  looks  through  death."  For  the  inspired 
"Ode"  in  which  the  older  laureate  declared  the  basis  of  his  belief 
there  is  no  match  in  "In  Memoriam";  the  new  interpretation  of 
Platonism  sounded  deep  places  where  Tennyson's  more  deliberately 
philosophical  plummet  does  not  reach.  Tennyson's  recollections 
of  early  childhood  provide  him  only  with  the  unhappy  belief 
that,  as  the  man 

"forgets  the  days  before 
God  shut  the  doorways  of  his  head,"^ 

so  the  happy  dead  will  forget  the  life  of  earth.  There  is  less  real 
insight,  poetic  or  philosophic,  in  such  a  conclusion,  than  in  the 
vision  which, 

"In  a  season  of  calm  weather. 
Though  inland  far  we  be," 

catches  sight 

"Of  that  immortal  sea 
Which  brought  us  hither. "^ 

Tennyson  has  left  us  record  of  the  process  by  which  he  ceased 
to  believe  in  the  persistence  of  personality.     Early  he  wrote, 

"  That  each,  who  seems  a  separate  whole, 
Should  move  his  rounds,  and  fusing  all 
The  skirts  of  self  again,  should  fall 
Remerging  in  the  general  Soul, 

"Is  faith  as  vague  as  all  unsweet."^ 

Later,  the  sense  of  his  friend's  presence  in  all  the  universe  about 
him  came  to  him  as  a  more  comforting  belief  than  that  in  an  endur- 
ing identity,  and  he  concluded, 

"Thy  voice  is  on  the  rolling  air; 

I  hear  thee  where  the  waters  run; 
Thou  standest  in  the  rising  sun, 
And  in  the  setting  thou  art  fair."^ 

*  In  Memoriam,  Canto  XLIV. 

*  Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality,  Globe  ed.  of  Wordsworth,  p.  360. 
'  In  Memoriam,  Canto  XLVII. 

*  Ibid.,  Canto  CXXX. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  131 

Perhaps  Wordsworth  passed  through  an  equally  slow  and  tortuous 
process  in  the  development  of  his  similar  belief.  Eight  simple 
lines  alone  give  us  the  result  of  any  such  thought  development. 
Their  pure  dignity  and  impressiveness  speak  of  a  mind  discerning 
and  sincere  in  its  philosophic  quest. 

"A  slumber  did  my  spirit  seal; 
I  had  no  human  fears: 
She  seem'd  a  thing  that  could  not  feel 
The  touch  of  earthly  years. 

"No  motion  has  she  now,  no  force; 
She  neither  hears  nor  sees; 
RoU'd  round  in  earth's  diurnal  course 
With  rocks,  and  stones,  and  trees. "^ 

The  pages  of  Tennyson's  great  elegy  contain  nothing  more  com- 
plete as  a  poetic  rendering  of  a  philosophic  view.  Nor  is  Tenny- 
son's conclusion  as  to  the  nature  of  God  an  advance  over  Words- 
worth's.    The 

"  far-off  divine  event, 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves''^ 

is  only  Wordsworth's 

"spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things."^ 

and  it  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  in  understanding  of  the  God 

"Diffused  through  all,  that  doth  make  all  one  whole,"* 

Tennyson  should  advance  beyond  the  truly  philosophic  dieamer 
who  did  more  than  any  other  one  man  to  make  transcendentalism 
a  part  of  English  thought.  No  passage  of  Tennyson  reaches 
deeper  into  the  heart  of  things  than  Coleridge's 

"Life  is  a  vision  shadowy  of  Truth ;"^ 

or  his  longer  explanation  of  the  relation  of  sense  to  spirit: 

^  Globe  ed.  of  Wordsworth,  p.  115. 

*  In  Memoriam,  last  stanza. 

'  Liyies  on  Tintern  Abbey,  Globe  ed.  of  \\ordsworth ,  p.  94. 

*  Coleridge,  Religious  Musings,  1.  131. 
» Ibid.,  1.  .396. 


132  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

"For  all  that  meets  the  bodily  sense  I  deem 
Symbolical,  one  mighty  alphabet 
For  infant  minds ;  and  we  in  this  low  world 
Placed  with  our  backs  to  bright  Reality, 
That  we  may  learn  with  young  unwounded  ken 
The  substance  from  its  shadow;"^ 

or  his  supremely  beautiful  expression  of  the  relation  between 
nature  and  God: 

"And  what  if  all  of  animated  nature 
Be  but  organic  harps  diversely  framed. 
That  tremble  into  thought,  as  o'er  them  sweeps 
Plastic  and  vast,  one  intellectual  breeze, 
At  once  the  Soul  of  each,  and  God  of  all?"- 

Coleridge,  too,  summed  up  in  a  single  line  the  element  of  Words- 
worth's nature  philosophy  of  which  Tennyson  failed  to  achieve 
an  understanding. 

"In  nature  there  is  nothing  melancholy,"* 

wrote  Coleridge.  So  Wordsworth  thought,  when  he  turned  to 
the  daisy  to  "repair  (his)  heart  with  gladness";  so  he  thought 
when,  passing  the  hour  of  thoughtless  youth,  and  hearing  in  the 
universal  harmony 

"The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity" 

he  found  that  melody 

"Not  harsh  nor  grating,  though  with  ample  power 
To  chasten  or  subdue";* 

so  he  thought,  even  when  he  looked  at  the  "sober  coloring"  of 
the  clouds  that  gathered  "round  the  setting  sun"  and  seemed  to 
hear  echoing  from  the  shadows  the  triumphant  shout, 

"Another  race  hath  been,  and  other  pahns  are  won."^ 

For  Tennyson  there  was  in  nature  no  remedy,  no  solace,  no 
uplift,  except  such  as  comes  from  the  sharing  of  grief  with  a 
listener,  for  nowhere  in  "In  Memoriam"  is  there  record  that 

1  Coleridge,  The  Destiny  of  Nations,  II.  17-22. 

2  Coleridge,  The  Eolian  Harp,  11.  44-48. 
'  Coleridge,  The  Nightingale,  1.  15. 

*  Tintern  Abbey,  Globe  ed.  of  Wordsworth,  p.  94. 
^  Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality,  11.  195-98. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  133 

nature  was  to  him  anything  but  an  echo  of  his  own  mood  of  "calm 
despair"  or  "wild  imrest."' 

Nor  did  Tennj-son  progress  in  philosophy  beyond  Shelley,  the 
prophet  of  revolt.  More  truly,  he  did  not  progress  so  far.  "In 
Memoriam"  shows  no  spirit  of  revolt  against  the  existing  order, 
none  of  that  vicarious  passion  for  freedom,  none  of  that  intense, 
unresting  devotion  to  truth,  which  in  Shelley  ever  beat  its  wings 
against  the  void.  It  is  freedom  that  forms  the  keynote  in  all 
Shelley's  descriptions  of  his  ideal  world — a  world  where  he^saw 

"Religion's  pomp  made  desolate  by  the  scorn 
Of  Wisdom's  faintest  smile,  and  thrones  uptorn. 
And  dwellings  of  mild  people  interspersed 
With  undivided  fields  of  ripening  corn. 
And  love  made  free,"- 

Freedom  and  \'irtue  are  for  him  synonymous: 

"All  spirits  are  enslaved  which  serve  things  evil."^ 
The  triumph  of  Pi'ometheus  is  the  triumph  of  truth  and  freedom : 

"To  suffer  woes  which  Hope  thinks  infinite; 
To  forgive  wrongs  darker  than  death  or  night ; 
To  defy  Power,  which  seems  omnipotent; 
To  love,  and  bear;  to  hope  till  Hope  creates 
From  its  own  wreck  the  thing  it  contemplates; 
Neither  to  change,  nor  falter,  nor  repent; 
This  ...  is  to  be 
Good,  great  and  joyous,  beautiful  and  free."^ 

The  magnificent  "Ode  to  Liberty"  is  a  matchless  paean  of  the 
Rights  of  Man,  thundering  in  deep  organ  tones  the  glories  of 
freedom.  Similar  utterances  of  other  poets  grow  weak  and  pale 
beside 

"  Like  heaven's  sun  girt  by  the  exhalation 
Of  its  own  glorious  light,  thou  didst  arise, 
Chasing  thy  foes  from  nation  unto  nation 
Like  shadows:  as  if  day  had  cloven  the  skies 
At  dreaming  midnight  o'er  the  western  wave."^ 

'  bee  above,  pp.  87-88. 

2  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  Canto  VII,  Stanza  XXXV. 

3  Prometheus  Unbound,  Act  II,  Scene  4. 
« Ibid.,  Act  IV,  end. 

'  Ode  to  Liberty,  Stanza  XI. 


134  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Tennyson  was  too  thoroughly  conservative  to  realize  the  need  of 
freedom;  or  else  his  personal  problem  crowded  out  of  his  mind, 
as  he  wrote  "In  Memoriam,"  needs  foreign  to  his  own  nature  and 
crisis.  Unless  such  an  explanation  is  accepted,  it  is  hard  to 
conceive  why,  in  a  time  when  world  events  were  making  men  of 
sensitive  soul  aUve  to  the  new  spirit  of  freedom,  there  should  be, 
in  a  philosophical  poem,  no  hint  of  the  philosophy  of  liberty. 
Yet  Tennyson  need  not  have  been  overconservative  to  fall  behind 
Shelley  in  this  respect.  Shelley's  might  be  the  voice  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  radical,  with  an  infusion  of  idealism. 

Nowhere  did  Tennj^son  more  than  approximate  the  depth,  the 
thoughtfulness,  the  discernment,  the  originaUty  of  interpretation 
which  can  be  found  repeatedly  in  Shelley's  attempts  to  read  the 
riddle  of  the  universe.  The  life  of  earth  is  a  dream,  a  shadow,  a 
symbol,  a  succession  of  "stormy  visions,"  the  awakening  from 
which  is  what  men  call  death.  Behind  the  phantoms  is  reality, 
the  reality  to  which  Shelley  would  attain,  though  attainment  came 
by  way  of  torment  like  that  of  his  Titan.  So  struggUng  for  truth, 
he  reached  a  perception  of  the  immanent  soul  of  the  world. 

"How  glorious  art  thou,  Earth!    And  if  thou  be 
The  shadow  of  some  spirit  lovelier  still, 
Though  evil  stain  its  work,  and  it  should  be 
Like  its  creation,  weak  yet  beautiful, 
I  could  fall  down  and  worship  that  and  thee."^ 

There  is  a  suggestion  of  such  an  interpretation  of  the  universe  in 
Tennyson's  Une,  "They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee,"  which 
amounts  to  his  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter.  But  Tennyson 
was  finally  content  with  the  faith  of  the  mystic,  who,  accepting 
what  he  deems  to  be  impossible  of  proof,  rehes  on  intuition  for 
assurance.  Through  years  he  tried  to  reason  out  a  standing- 
ground  for  his  faith ;  failing,  and  knowing  faith  to  be  the  necessity 
of  his  soul,  he  made  the  mystic's  leap  in  the  dark.  But  there  was 
in  Shelley  none  of  the  mystic.  His  restless  soul  could  not  be 
satisfied  with  any  faith  for  which  his  swift  intellect  gave  him  no 
foundation.  A  philosophical  position  based  on  intuitive  faith 
would  have  seemed  to  him  a  wickedness  and  a  hypocrisy.  With 
the  intensity  of  the  zealot  he  sought  truth  for  its  own  sake;  and 
the  solution  of  life  at  which  he  arrived  was  therefore  more  truly 

^  Prometheus  Unbound,  Act  II,  Scene  3. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  135 

philosophical,  even  though  in  his  passionate  enthusiasms  Shelley 
seemed  to  display  none  of  the  balance  of  the  philosopher's  tempera- 
ment. Tennyson's  problem  is  not  the  relation  of  all  the  visible 
life  of  the  universe  to  the  Unknowable  behind  it;  his  narrower 
problem  is  the  relation  of  one  individual  soul  to  that  unseen 
world.  Consequently  there  is  in  Tennyson  no  such  comprehension 
of  the  relation  between  the  seen  and  the  unseen  as  in  the  Unes  from 
"Adonais": 

"The  One  remains,  the  many  change  and  pass; 
Heaven's  light  forever  shines,  Earth's  shadows  fly; 
Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-coloured  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  Eternity, 
Until  Death  tramples  it  to  fragments."^ 

Tennyson  was  too  much  befogged,  in  his  groping  after  a  solution 
for  the  problem  of  his  own  personal  grief,  to  have  the  penetrating 
world-vision  necessary  for  so  tremendous  a  summarj^  of  the 
universe.  His  opinions  not  only  were  intuitive  but  were  expressed 
in  a  manner  wholly  emotional;  but  Shelley,  with  all  his  passion 
and  wild  inspiration,  makes  use  of  his  emotional  appeal  only  as 
the  garment  of  a  well  reasoned  and  formulated  thought.  The 
passion  of  grief  for  a  single  beloved  individual  is  hardly  comparable, 
as  a  source  of  vision  and  power,  with  the  passion  of  a  man  who 
carried  the  burden  of  a  whole  world's  grief  and  oppression  on  his 
tameless,  rebellious  heart. 

It  is  the  same  generous,  impersonal  point  of  view  that  differ- 
entiated Shelley's  view  of  immortality  from  Tennyson's.  The 
poet  of  "In  Memoriam"  was  bound  by  his  own  desire;  how  be 
true  to  philosophy  in  the  face  of  his  own  heart's  longing  for  what 
philosophy  forbade?  Shelley,  possessed  of  the  philosopher's 
logic  though  not  of  the  philosopher's  temperament,  and  under  no 
pressure  of  a  private  grief,  could  write 

"  the  pure  spirit  shall  flow 
Back  to  the  burning  fountain  whence  it  came, 
A  portion  of  the  Eternal."'^ 

This  is  the  only  consistent  philosophical  creed  of  immortality;  in  so 
far  as  Tennyson  refused  to  accept  it,  by  so  much  less  was  he  the 
philosopher  than  was  Shelley. 

I  Adonais,  Stanza  LII.  *  Ibid.,  Stanza  XXXVIII. 


136  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

The  philosophy  of  "In  Memoriam,"  then,  points  backward 
rather  than  forward.  It  reflects  of  the  thought  of  the  period  no 
more  than  its  predecessors  reJQect.  In  the  matter  of  the  poetic 
qualities  which  were  the  contribution  to  English  verse  of  Keats 
and  Shelley  particularly,  the  poem  shows  no  more  advance  over 
earlier  writing  than  its  thought  does  over  earlier  thought.  Tenny- 
son's deserved  fame  as  a  poet  rests  largely  on  the  characteristics 
of  music,  diction,  beauty  of  sense  impression,  and  the  power  of 
word  and  line  to  express  mood.  But  his  music  does  not  surpass 
Shelley's;  does  not  equal  it,  indeed,  if  to  be  master  of  many 
instruments  and  many  rhythms  is  a  test  of  the  musician.  The 
music  of  "In  Memoriam"  is  that  of  the  violin,  now  wailing,  now 
mellow  with  the  memory  of  gladness,  now  soaring  on  a  triumphant 
overtone  of  joy  conquering  grief.     The  verse  sings  as  it  tells  how 

"  round  us  aU  the  thicket  rang 
To  many  a  flute  of  Arcady."^ 

It  sings  as  it  re-echoes  the  Christmas  bells, 

"Each  voice  four  changes  on  the  wind, 
That  now  dilate,  and  now  decrease."^ 

It  sings  in  the  picture  of  autumn  calm — 

"  Cahn  and  deep  peace  on  this  high  wold, 
And  on  these  dews  that  drench  the  furze, 
And  all  the  silvery  gossamers 
That  twinkle  into  green  and  gold";' 

and  in  the  picture  of  the  spring  breeze  at  evening — 

"Sweet  after  showers,  ambrosial  air. 
That  roUest  from  the  gorgeous  gloom 
Of  evening  over  brake  and  bloom 
And  meadow."  ^ 

But  always  the  music  is  of  the  violin,  and  always  the  theme  is  one, 
in  a  melody  as  reiterant  as  that  of  a  Bach  fugue,  though  less 
formal  in  its  cadences.     In  contrast,  in  the  single  poem  "  Adonais," 

^  In  Memoriam,  Canto  XXIII.  '  Ihid.,  Canto  XI. 

2  Ihid.,  Canto  XXVII.  *  Ibid.,  Canto  LXXXVI. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  137 

the  work  of  Shelley  best  comparable  with  "In  Memoriam," 
there  sounds  the  plaintive  cry  of  the  violin : 

"His  head  was  bound  with  pansies  overblown, 
And  faded  violets,  white,  and  pied,  and  blue; 

He  came  the  last,  neglected  and  apart ; 

A  herd-abandoned  deer  struck  by  the  hunter's  dart;"^ 

and  the  majestic  note  of  the  organ : 

"  The  splendours  of  the  firmament  of  time 
May  be  eclipsed,  but  are  extinguished  not; 
Like  stars  to  their  appointed  height  they  climb 
And  death  is  a  low  mist  which  cannot  blot 
The  brightness  it  may  veil;"  * 

and  the  Hquid  sweetness  of  the  harp: 

"He  is  a  portion  of  the  loveliness 
Which  once  he  made  more  lovely."  ^ 

An  elegy  could  not  contain  such  a  flute  note  as  that  of  the  "Sky- 
lark"; the  clarion  call  of  the  "West  Wind"  and  the  rapid  sweep 
of  fingers  over  keys  in  the  rhythm  of  the  "Cloud"  lack  the  appro- 
priate quality  of  melancholy.  But  even  in  this  single  rhythm 
the  variety  of  musical  tone  shows  that  Shelley  could  "speak 
sweet  ...  in  many  sorts  of  music."  Tennyson,  though  his 
melody  far  surpassed  that  of  predecessors,  contemporaries,  and 
most  successors,  had  not  learned  what  Shelley  knew.  With  the 
possible  exception  of  Swinburne,  no  poet  has  learned  it. 

Again,  one  of  the  masterly  characteristics  of  Tennyson  is  his 
choice  of  vivid,  expressive  words  to  paint  pictures  and  to  convey 
moods.  Even  here  he  was  but  carrying  on  the  tradition  created 
by  Keats  and  Shelley  before  him.  Whatever  the  beauty  of  the 
diction  of  "In  Memoriam,"  it  contains  nothing  to  surpass  the 
description  of  Athens  in  the  "  Ode  to  Liberty" : 

"Athens  arose:  a  city  such  as  vision 
Builds  from  the  purple  crags  and  silver  towers 
Of  battlemented  cloud,  as  in  derision 
Of  kingliest  masonry :  the  ocean-floors 
Pave  it;  the  evening  sky  pavilions  it; 

Its  portals  are  inhabited 

By  thunder-zoned  winds,  each  head 
Within  its  cloudy  wings  with  sunfire  garlanded." 

'  Stanza  XXXIII.  '  Stanza  XLIII. 

2  Stanza  XLIV. 


138  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

In  the  lyrics  of  "Prometheus  Unbound"  there  are  combinations 
of_^words  unbelievably  lovely: 

"We  wandered,  underneath  the  young  gray  dawn, 
And  multitudes  of  dense  white  fleecy  clouds 
Were  wandering  in  thick  flocks  along  the  mountains 
Shepherded  by  the  slow,  unwilling  wind; 
And  the  white  dew  on  the  new  bladed  grass, 
Just  piercing  the  dark  earth,  hung  silently : 

A  wind  arose  among  the  pines ;  it  shook 
The  clinging  music  from  their  boughs,  and  then 
Low,  sweet,  faint  sounds,  like  the  farewell  of  ghosts, 
Were  heard."  ^ 

Such  passages  as  these  show  not  only  that  if  Tennyson  was  a 
master  of  diction  there  had  been  masters  preceding  him,  but  also 
that  in  the  rendering  into  verse  of  sense  impressions  he  was  not 
unrivalled.  Similar  citations  can  be  made  from  Keats,  whose 
point  of  contact  with  Tennyson  is  the  vivid  sensuous  beauty  of 
his^descriptions.     At  one  moment,  as  his  pages  pass, 

"From  the  darkening  gloom  a  silver  dove 
Upsoars,  and  darts  into  the  eastern  light";* 

at  the  next, 

"Here  are  sweet  peas,  on  tiptoe  for  a  flight: 
With  wings  of  gentle  flush  o'er  delicate  white, 
And  taper  fingers  catching  at  all  things, 
To  bind  them  all  about  with  tiny  rings;"' 

"peaceful  images"  follow: 

"the  stirs 
Of  a  swan's  neck  unseen  among  the  rushes : 
A  linnet  starting  all  about  the  bushes : 
A  butterfly,  with  golden  wings  broad  parted, 
Nestling  a  rose."* 

In  view  of  such  comparison,  it  is  doing  no  injustice  to  Tennyson 
to  say  that  in  writing  his  musical  verse  with  its  liquid  puritj-  of 
diction  and  its  vivid  use  of  sensuous  images  for  reproduction  of 
scene  or  mood,  he  was  doing  no  more  than  poets  before  him  had 
done.     His  work  was  not  creating  art  of  a  new  character;  rather, 

1  Act  II,  Scene  1.  '  Ibid.,  p.  24. 

2  Keats,  Cabinet  ed.,  p.  20.  *  Ibid.,  p.  39. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  139 

in  its  power  and  poise,  in  the  sustained  quality  of  its  rich  beauty, 
it  made  a  fitting  climax  for  the  art  of  the  closing  epoch. 

With  all  that  he  had  in  common  with  his  predecessors,  in  which 
both  he  and  they  were  the  product  of  a  time  of  storm  and  stress, 
there  are  in  Tennyson,  as  in  Da  vies  and  in  Pope,  individual 
elements  not  dependent  on  the  character  of  his  times  but  rising 
from  his  own  soul.  Whether  or  not  his  verse  reaches  the  poetic 
level  of  Shelley's,  his  poetry  is  better  loved  than  that  of  any  of 
the  poets  before  him.  Shelley  is  to  be  admired;  Keats  is  to  be 
wondered  at;  Wordsworth  is  to  be  revered,  and  sometimes  to  be 
borne  with  patiently;  but  Tennyson  is  loved.  Perhaps  it  is  the 
love  that  one  gives  to  the  friend  who  has  shared  with  one  his  grief. 
Perhaps  there  is  a  certain  popular  appeal  in  Tennyson  that  the 
other  writers  fail  of.  Shelley's  gloom  and  despair  are  the  index 
of  few  actual  moods,  in  a  normal  existence,  for  Shelley's  tragedy 
was  almost  unique.  Wordsworth's  adoration  of  nature  becomes 
tiresome  with  much  repetition.  There  are  moments  when  the 
sensuous  beauty  of  the  images  of  Keats  cloys  like  too  much  sweet. 
But  Tennyson  expresses,  in  language  lovely  enough  to  satisfy 
the  aesthetic  sense,  simple  enough  to  come  within  the  ken  of  the 
simple  heart,  a  mood  consequent  upon  an  experience  escaped  by 
no  one.  The  great  reason  for  his  appeal  is  that  he  puts  satisfyingly 
into  words  the  emotions  which  men  and  women  who  are  not 
poets  feel,  and  long  to  express,  and  cannot. 

There  are  other  factors  in  the  appeal  of  "In  Memoriam" 
which  differentiate  Tennyson  from  his  predecessors.  One  such 
factor  is  his  use  of  similes  from  the  everyday  human  life  which  he 
saw  around  him — homely  similes,  endeared  by  their  common- 
placeness  and  familiarity.  The  maiden  waiting  for  the  lover 
who  would  never  arrive;  the  lover  saddened  by  finding  his  sweet- 
heart away  from  home ;  the  grief  of  a  household  for  a  dead  master ; 
the  bride  leaving  her  father's  house;  the  village  maid  who  loves 
above  her  station;  the  self-made  man;  the  wife  whose  husband 
has  outgrown  her — all  these  are  figures  out  of  the  tapestry  of 
everyday,  woven  between  sunrise  and  sunset,  and  holding  the 
attraction  of  the  familiar.  Perhaps  the  strongest  appeal  of  all  is 
the  religious  element  in  the  poem.  It  is  unsurpassed  as  an  exquisite 
expression  of  intuitive  faith,  as  the  triumphant  answer  of  mystic 
to  sceptic.  As  such  its  appeal  will  never  be  outworn,  for  both 
mystic  and  sceptic  are  immortal. 


140  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

If  to  all  these  excellences  be  added  the  poise  and  balance, 
unhasting,  unresting,  with  which  Tennyson  pursues  his  theme, 
he  may  be  recognized  as  the  best  poetic  product  of  the  years 
before  him.  But  he  was  a  product  of  the  past.  As  was  the  case 
with  Pope,  there  was  in  his  message  little  of  the  prophetic.  A 
touch  of  future  vision  appears  once  or  twice.  The  well-known 
New  Year  song  calls  for  the  ringing  in  of  the  new  social  order,  the 
ringing  out  of  "the  feud  of  rich  and  poor"  and  of  "the  narrowing 
lust  of  gold."     The  deep  voice  cries  "across  the  storm, 

"Proclaiming  social  truth  shall  spread, 
And  justice,"  ^ 

and  prophesying  a  social  convulsion  in  which  thrones  shall  topple — 
a  consummation,  in  Tennyson's  view,  devoutly  to  be  feared. 
For  the  most  part,  however,  there  is  no  forward-pointing  outlook, 
no  vision  of  the  new  time  heralded  by  Charles  Kingsley  and  the 
Brownings.  The  man  who,  in  the  days  when  the  Revolution  of 
1830  was  giving  new  courage  to  the  hearts  of  liberty-lovers  through- 
out Europe,  could  speak  of  it  as 

"The  red  fool-fury  of  the  Seine"; 

the  man  who  could  say  with  contempt,  in  another  poem, 

"We  are  not  cotton-spinners  all"^ 

was  too  conservative  to  feel  the  social  sympathy  that  heard  the 
cry  of  the  children,  or  conceived  an  "Aurora  Leigh,"  or  expressed 
through  the  pen  of  a  clergyman  the  heart  of  an  Alton  Locke,  or 
put  into  the  mouth  of  a  Pippa  the  philosophy  needed  by  the  rich 
and  great. 

Moreover,  there  is  no  suggestion  in  the  poem  of  the  revived 
spirit  of  virility  that  Browning  infused  into  English  verse,  freeing 
it  from  the  sentimental  emotionalness  that  Enghsh  poets  had 
caught  from  the  German  romantic  school.  The  "new  poetry" 
of  mid- Victorian  times  was  to  be  characterized  by  ruggedness 
and  force  rather  than  by  music,  by  eccentric  independence  rather 
than  by  grace  and  beauty.  Too  much  of  "In  Memoriam"  makes 
the  reader  sad  in  spite  of  himself,  even  in  those  youthful  days 

1  In  Memoriam,  Canto  CXXVII. 

*  Tennyson's  Works,  Cambridge  ed.,  p.  269. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  141 

before  death  has  touched  him.  It  is  an  opiate;  Browning  is  a 
tonic.  The  wholesome  and  determined  ring  of  a  faith  in  the 
essential,  immediate  goodness  of  life  has  in  it  more  of  inspiration 
than  the  melancholy,  far-off  hope  for  final  good — a  hope  so  doubt- 
fully expressed,  when  read  in  contrast  with  "Asolando,"  for 
example,  that  it  seems  to  ring  its  own  knell.  Tennyson's  hope 
is  a  hope  seen  through  tears.  There  are  no  tears  in  the  soul  of 
the  man  who 

"Never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast  forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break; 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would  triumph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 

Sleep  to  wake."^ 

Tennyson,  Uke  Davies  and  Pope,  was  the  voice  of  the  end  of  a 
period — in  each  case  a  period  distinctive,  full  of  movement, 
productive  of  change.  Each  poet  sums  up  in  himself  the  character- 
istic literary  qualities  achieved  by  the  writers  preceding  him  or 
contemporary  with  him;  thus  each  is  a  reflex  of  the  literary  life 
of  the  time.  Yet  each  achieves  his  individual  distinction  as  a 
poet,  not  bj^  virtue  of  the  q'uaUties  he  shares  with  or  reflects  from 
others,  but  by  those  elements  of  his  art  which  grew  out  of  his  own 
individuaUty.  The  poet  side  of  the  poet-philosopher  is  less 
wholly  a  mirror  than  the  philosopher  side. 

*  Epilogve  to  Asolando. 


VI 

He  who  would  write  on  a  philosophical  theme  cannot  avoid 
religion.  For  philosophy  is  the  eternally  persistent,  the  eternally 
foiled  attempt  to  answer  the  "Why?"  of  the  universe — that 
riddle  inseparably  connected  not  only  with  the  seen  and  concrete, 
hke  man  and  nature,  but  with  the  unseen  and  abstract,  hke  God 
and  the  soul,  immortahty  and  freedom,  terms  which,  whether 
looked  upon  as  hypotheses  or  as  facts,  represent  the  great  issues 
of  religion.  The  philosopher,  who  since  the  beginning  of  time 
has  thought  that  by  searching  he  could  find  out  God,  if  only  to 
disprove  His  existence,  cannot,  though  he  call  himself  positivist, 
sceptic,  or  atheist,  escape  religion. 

The  poet-philosophers  of  this  discussion,  essentially  conservative 
in  philosophy,  and  filled  with  an  intense  moral  earnestness  of 
purpose,  did  not  desire  to  escape  it.  Inextricably  interwoven 
with  the  fabric  of  each  poet's  philosophy,  ser^dng  as  inspiration 
to  the  most  truly  poetic  portions  of  his  poetry,  appearing  in  one 
as  creed,  in  another  as  ethical  dictum,  in  the  third  as  faith,  is 
religion,  A  complete  understanding  of  their  relation  to  the  thought 
of  their  times  necessitates  a  brief  review  of  the  religious  thought 
of  each  epoch,  and  of  the  poet's  religious  position  in  relation  to 
that  thought. 

The  thought-forces  that  made  the  movement  known  as  the 
Reformation  did  not  become  a  vital  part  of  the  mind  of  the 
average  non-ecclesiastical  thinker  until  long  after  Protestantism 
was  an  established  fact.  The  influences  that  had  made  the  loyal 
Englishman  an  Anglican  had  worked  out  in  practice  long  before 
they  had  become  conscious  ideas.  Such  a  man  as  Davies,  with  a 
creed  entirely  orthodox  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  established 
church,  was  swayed  by  thought  currents  set  in  motion  a  century 
before  him,  but  only  in  his  time  seeping  into  the  soil  of  the  average 
individual  consciousness.  What  were  the  elements  that  made  the 
background  for  the  rehgion  of  Davies'  time? 

Free  thought,  a  term  too  often  confounded  with  agnosticism 
and  materialism,  was  not  a  nineteenth  century  product.  The 
first  of  its  modern  forms  was  the  rebellion  of  independent  thinkers 
against  the  schoolmen.  The  flooding  light  of  the  Renaissance 
showed  too  clearly  the  dust  that  had  accumulated  in  the  mediaeval 

142 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  143 

storehouse  of  church  doctrine.  A  church  so  fearful  of  its  authority 
that  it  refused  to  face  the  truth  presented  by  Copernicus  and 
GaHleo  could  not  command  the  respect  of  honestly  thinking  men. 
Scholars  who,  in  the  face  of  the  discovery  of  an  old  world  of  learn- 
ing, full  of  the  treasures  of  art  and  thought,  and  of  a  new  world 
with  still  unexplored  possibilities  for  adventure  and  for  wealth, 
could  still  dispute  "with  unabated  enthusiasm  about  instants, 
essences,  and  quiddities,'^  and  who  could  still  direct  their  students 
to  the  study  of  the  old  Trivium  and  Quadrivium  in  wretched 
mediaeval  text-books  or  corrupt  translations  of  the  ancients, 
could  not  compete  with  the  fresh,  humanistic  influence  of  the 
enthusiasts  for  the  secular  classics.  Erasmus,  the  great  humanist 
of  the  church,  who  combined  a  rehgious  purpose  with  a  trained 
intelligence,  had  a  two-fold  work  to  do,  in  bringing  about  the 
breakdown  of  scholasticism  that  paved  the  way  for  the  Refor- 
mation. By  his  bitter  ridicule  of  the  corruption  of  monastic  life 
and  of  the  bigotry  and  ignorance  of  theologians  he  fed  the  dis- 
satisfaction with  church  practices  that  was  leading  to  distrust  of 
church  dogma.  And  by  his  apphcation  of  classical  learning  and 
humanistic  methods  of  scholarship  to  Biblical  study  and  interpre- 
tation he  paved  the  way  for  that  individual  interpretation  of 
scripture  which  developed  into  the  substitution  of  scriptural 
authority  for  the  authority  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 

Erasmus  may  be  called  the  first  of  modern  free  thinkers.  This 
is  not  to  miscall  him  the  first  of  the  reformers,  for  he  was  antedated 
by  Hus  and  Wiclif.  But  he  was  the  first  thorough  scholar  to 
combine  with  the  doctrinal  and  ethical  viewpoint  an  intellectual 
approach  to  religious  problems;  and  the  first  to  see  that  in  the 
application  to  religion  of  scholarly,  not  scholastic,  habits  and 
progressive  methods  of  thought  lay  the  salvation  of  Christianity 
from  the  condition  of  dry  rot  into  which  the  bigotry  of  the  ecclesi- 
astic and  the  credulous  ignorance  of  the  layman  had  brought  it. 
Colet  as  well  as  Erasmus  saw  that  an  independent,  vigorous, 
intelligent  interpretation  of  the  Bible  meant  new  life  for  the  church; 
but  it  was  Erasmus  who  used  his  wealth  of  scholarship  to  make  the 
interpretation  possible.  It  was  Colet  who  called  the  schoohnen 
dull  and  stupid  fellows;  it  was  Colet  who  said  that  Aquinas  had 
"contaminated  the  whole  doctrine  of  Christ  with  his  own  profane 

*  Drummond,  Erasmus,  Vol.  I,  p.  67. 


144  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

philosophy;"^  it  was  Colet  who,  in  his  lectures  on  the  Epistle  of 
St.  Paul  to  the  Romans,  boldly  threw  off  the  chains  of  the  scholastic 
use  of  proof-texts  and  treated  the  Bible  as  a  book  like  other 
books,  except  that  it  contained  more  vital  truth,  and  the  apostle 
as  a  man  like  other  men.^  But  it  was  Erasmus  who  not  only 
seared  with  his  scathing  satire  in  "The  Praise  of  Folly"  the 
"superciHous  and  irritable"  race  of  divines,^  who  spent  their 
time  in  solving  such  profound  mysteries  of  divinity  as  "whether 
God  could  have  taken  upon  him  the  form  of  a  woman,  of  the 
devil,  of  an  ass,  of  a  cucumber,  or  a  flint-stone";  who  not  only 
exposed  relentlessly  the  corruption  of  the  monastic  life  and  the 
un-Christlikeness  of  Christian  teaching  so-called;*  but  who  also, 
as  the  earliest  of  modern  "higher  critics,"  applied  the  methods  of 
secular  learning  to  scriptural  translation  and  interpretation, 
removing  the  Bible  from  its  position  as  a  fetich,  or  as  a  storehouse 
of  proof-texts  for  upholding  the  doctrines  of  the  schoolmen,  to 
that  of  a  guide  and  standard  of  spiritual  truth,  from  which,  if 
rightly  understood,  might  be  deduced  the  fundamentals  of  Chris- 
tian doctrine.  His  restoration  of  the  New  Testament  to  its 
original  Greek  was  the  work  of  a  man  who  cared  not  only  for  the 
purity  of  reUgion  but  for  the  purity  of  art;  the  Bible  was  to  him 
not  only  a  sacred  book  but  a  great  work  of  literature.  That  he 
felt  such  a  restoration  to  be  the  first  step  on  the  way  toward 
translation  into  the  vernacular  is  evident  from  his  own  preface. 
"I  long  that  the  husbandman  should  sing  portions  of  them  to 
himself  as  he  follows  the  plough,  that  the  weaver  should  hum 
them  to  the  tune  of  his  shuttle,  that  the  traveller  should  beguile 
with  their  stories  the  tedium  of  his  journey."^  His  edition  of  the 
New  Testament,  moreover,  contained  daring  criticisms  of  the 
Vulgate,  enraging  the  monks,  who  felt  that  the  Holy  Scriptures 
were  superior  to  the  rules  of  grammar.  It  ventured  upon  textual 
criticism,  suggesting  interpolations,  doubts  as  to  authorship,  and 
possible  variant  readings,  quite  in  the  manner  of  modern  critical 
scholarship,  and  treating  the  Bible  as  the  humanists  would  have 

'  Drummond,  Erasmus,  Vol.  I,  pp.  82-83. 

^  Meiklejohn,  Erasmus,  in  The  Reformers,  p.  161. 

'  Drummond,  pp.  192-94. 

*  Enchiridion,  or  Christian  Soldier's  Dagger. 

» Meiklejohn,  p.  176. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  145 

treated  a  piece  of  secular  literature.^  For  in  the  work  of  Erasmus 
were  combined  the  best  elements  of  the  humanistic  learning  and 
of  the  new  spirit  of  religious  freedom  which  permeated  the  Europe 
of  the  early  sixteenth  century. 

Had  the  ideas  of  Erasmus  borne  legitimate  fruit,  there  would 
have  been  substituted  for  the  papal  assumption  of  the  authority 
of  the  church  to  enforce  its  dogmatic  reading  of  scripture  as  the 
only  true  one,  a  free  and  individual  interpretation  of  the  Bible, 
made  by  each  man  for  himself,  each  constructing  for  himself  a 
rehgious  platform  based  on  scriptural  authority  but  shaped 
according  to  his  own  thought.  But  the  habit  of  submission  to 
authority  was  too  strong  in  the  minds  of  the  mass  of  the  people, 
and  the  temptation  to  capitahze  that  habit  was  too  powerful, 
even  though  unconsciously  so,  in  the  minds  of  men  with  genius  to 
lead.  Instead  of  dogmatic  decrees  of  an  infallible  church,  people 
found  themselves  under  bondage  to  dogmatic  interpretation  of  an 
infallibly  authoritative  book,  an  interpretation  dictated  by  the 
reformers,  who,  while  repudiating  the  practices  of  the  Church 
of  Rome,  had  learned  all  too  well  from  its  example  how  to  control 
the  minds  of  the  masses  bj''  the  fear  of  authority.  It  was  the 
external  trappings  of  the  church  that  the  Reformation  shook  off. 
Luther  and  Calvin  and  the  Enghsh  reformers,  while  insisting 
on  the  rights  of  the  individual  conscience  and  asserting  the  possi- 
biUty  and  necessity  of  man's  individual  approach  to  God,  made 
little  divergence  from  the  position  of  Augustine  and  Aquinas  in 
their  use  of  scripture  as  a  basis  of  doctrine.  In  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles  of  the  Church  of  England  appear  the  Trinity,  the  Incarna- 
tion, the  bodily  Resurrection,  the  infallibility  of  the  canon  of 
scripture,  original  sin,  predestination,  the  vicarious  atonement — 
all  doctrines  of  Rome.  The  divergence  from  Rome  brought 
about  at  the  Reformation  is  noticeable  in  such  articles  as  those 
having  to  do  with  the  definition  of  the  church  and  the  limitation 
of  its  authority,  with  its  inability  to  enforce  belief,  with  purgatory, 
pardons,  and  the  worship  of  saints  and  relics,  with  the  use  of  the 
vernacular  in  church  services,  the  number  of  the  sacraments,  and 
the  administration  of  the  eucharist  in  both  kinds,  and  with  the 
cehbacy  of  the  clergy.  This  latter  list  concerns  church  usage, 
not  the  beUef  of  the  individual  churchman.     It  is  well  known  that 

1  Drummond,  pp.  310-320. 


146  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Luther's  attack  was  upon  the  abuse  of  power  by  the  church,  upon 
the  corruption  of  its  practices,  and  upon  its  interference  between 
the  individual  soul  and  God.  Except  for  his  emphasis  upon 
faith  rather  than  works  there  was  httle  new  in  his  theology. 

Nor  was  there  novelty  in  the  theology  of  Calvin,  which  was  in 
many  respects  a  replica  of  that  of  Augustine.  Strenuous  as 
Calvin  was  in  his  combat  with  Roman  teaching  regarding  penance, 
the  earning  or  purchasing  of  pardons,  prayer  for  souls  in  purgatory, 
and  the  other  usages  with  which  his  cardinal  doctrines  of  justifica- 
tion by  faith  and  salvation  by  grace  were  in  opposition ;  rigorous 
as  he  was  in  establishing  and  enforcing  the  laws  of  his  newly 
conceived  theocratic  state;  the  points  in  his  creed  most  inseparably 
connected  with  his  name — predestination  and  election,  the  fall 
of  man,  and  eternal  salvation  or  reprobation — are  all  inheritances 
from  Augustine,  to  whose  severe  behef  in  these  doctrines  the 
leaders  of  the  mediaeval  church  had,  by  their  emphasis  on  good 
works,  forced  the  reformers  to  return. ^  "  Calvin  invents  nothing," 
says  a  recent  French  biography;  "he  reviews,  he  analyzes,  he 
develops,  and  especially  he  affirms."^  The  God  of  Augustine 
was  much  like  the  God  of  Calvin — "unique  and  supreme,  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  all  things,  in  whom  all  things  exist."' 
According  to  Augustine  as  to  Calvin,  the  elect  are  predestined 
to  salvation,  the  reprobate  abandoned  to  their  fate.  And  in 
proving  from  scripture  his  doctrine  of  election,  Calvin  proceeded 
in  a  way  similar  to  that  of  the  schoolmen  of  Rome,  "making 
important  the  texts  favorable  to  him,  neglecting  those  contrary, 
and  not  asking  if  his  viewpoint  accorded  with  the  most  ancient 
testimony  regarding  the  preaching  of  Jesus. "^  Yet,  though 
Calvin  thought  of  the  Bible  not  as  a  progressive  literature  but  as  a 
mere  storehouse  of  texts  and  doctrines  from  which  to  draw  what- 
ever he  needed,^  none  the  less  he  saw  in  the  Bible  the  only  true 
means  of  conamunication  between  God  and  man,  no  intermediary 
priest  being  needed  in  the  presence  of  so  complete  a  revelation. 
In  this  belief  was  embodied  what  was  the  greatest  achievement 
of  the  Reformation — the  doing  away  with  the  work  of  the  priest 
as  go-between.      Efforts  to  win  heaven  by  good  works  and  by 

'  Dyer,  Calvin,  p.  219.  *  Bossert,  Calvin,  p.  71. 

»  Bossert,  Calvin,  p.  66.  *  Ihid.,  p.  53. 

» lUd.,  p.  68. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  147 

penance  were  shown  to  be  futile.  Church  organization  was 
transformed.  The  superstitious  worship  of  relics  and  blind  belief 
in  their  healing  efficacy  were  abandoned.  Usages  growing  out  of 
the  importation  into  the  early  church  of  heathen  rites  and  cere- 
monies, such  as  the  apotheosis  of  Mary  to  the  position  of  queen 
of  heaven  and  mother  of  God,  were  looked  upon  with  horror. 
But  the  fundamental  tenets  of  the  creed  in  its  primitive  form 
were  accepted  with  little  question.  Abstract  theology  in  the 
sixteenth  century  was  scarcely  changed  from  the  theology  of  the 
scholastic  centuries.  The  most  recent  accepted  and  orthodox 
P*rotestant  teaching  in  the  church  of  Davies'  time  was  a  combina- 
tion of  Roman  doctrine  as  modified  in  the  Thirty-nine  Articles, 
and  of  Roman  doctrine  as  modified  in  Calvin's  "Institutes  of  the 
Christian  Religion." 

It  was  this  theology,  a  direct  inheritance  from  Augustine  and 
the  rest  of  the  fathers,  that  lay,  in  spite  of  its  conservatism,  at 
the  foundation  of  the  sixteenth  century  religious  movements  of 
extreme  individualistic  revolt.  The  reformers  wished  no  improve- 
ment in  doctrine  over  that  of  Augustine;  "in  the  authority 
which  they  accorded  to  him,  they  placed  him  immediately  after 
the  Holy  Scriptures."^  The  work  of  John  Knox  and  the  Scotch 
Presbyterians,  influenced  by  direct  contact  with  Calvin  in  Geneva, 
and  the  struggles  of  the  Huguenots  to  establish  Protestantism 
in  France  were  efforts  not  for  a  change  of  doctrine,  but  for  a 
removal  of  corruption  of  doctrine  and  for  correction  of  abuses  in 
church  practice  and  administration.  English  Puritans,  returning 
from  Geneva  at  the  accession  of  Elizabeth,  planned  to  purify 
the  worship,  the  preaching,  the  church  government  from  all 
traces  of  paganism,  "with  their  eyes  fixed  on  Geneva."^  But 
their  revolt  was  directed  toward  freedom  of  usage,  not  toward 
the  introduction  of  a  new  belief.  Questions  of  conformity  to 
stipulated  ritual,  of  the  use  of  a  set  form  of  worship,  of  submission 
to  the  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  were  the  inspiration  of  such  bitter 
and  tragic  contests  as  the  Martin  Marprelate  controversy,  in 
which  the  strongest  religious  individualism  asserted  itseK.  The 
error  of  such  heretics  as  Udall,  Cartwright,  and  Penry  was  not  a 
matter  of  unorthodox  belief  but  of  opposition  to  the  tendency  of 
the  established  church  to  assert  its  administrative  control  over 
the  consciences  of  men. 


>  Bossert,  Catvin,  p.  218.  ^  ji,i^^  p.  217. 


148  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Some  independent  religious  thinkers  there  had  been  before  the 
time  of  Davies,  who  had  attempted  to  introduce  into  theology 
new  ideas  about  God,  life,  the  soul,  nature,  and  immortality. 
Their  treatment  at  the  hands  of  CathoUc  and  Protestant  alike, 
for  their  daring  in  promulgating  new  systems  of  belief,  is  sufficient 
evidence  that  the  doctrines  of  the  Protestant  churches  of  the  late 
sixteenth  century  had  altered  little  from  the  cardinal  doctrines 
of  Rome.  Servetus,  a  Spanish  physician,  dared  to  teach  a  simple 
gospel  of  a  Christ  "who  demanded  no  act  of  adoration  for  himself, 
who  walked  in  the  midst  of  men  as  one  of  them";  dared  further  to 
assert  that  "the  metaphysical  Christ  imagined  by  the  theologians 
was  a  deceitful  mask  that  hid  the  real  Christ."^  These  heresies, 
together  with  the  refusal  to  accept  in  its  absurd  mediaeval  inter- 
pretation the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  taken  over  by  Protestantism 
from  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  together  with  his  belief  in  a  God 
immanent  in  the  whole  universe,  into  whose  being  all  creation 
will  finally  be  absorbed,  represented  a  really  progressive  step  in 
theology.  For  his  ideas  he  was  burned  at  the  stake  in  1553  by 
the  Council  of  Geneva,  with  the  reluctant  concurrence  of  Calvin.* 
Giordano  Bruno,  a  Dominican  monk,  wandered  from  country  to 
country  of  Europe,  spreading  his  message  of  the  God  indwelling, 
of  whose  thought  all  nature  is  a  reflection,  the  God  who  lives  "in 
the  blade  of  grass,  in  the  grain  of  sand,  in  the  atom  that  floats  in 
the  sunbeam,  as  well  as  in  the  boundless  All."^  Applying  the 
Copernican  theory  to  reUgion,  he  taught  that  the  earth  was  but 
one  among  many  worlds,  no  more  important  in  the  universe 
than  any  other  planet.  For  a  doctrine  so  subversive  of  the 
mediaeval  teaching  of  the  plan  of  salvation,  which  Protestants 
still  held  as  an  inheritance  from  Rome,  and  to  maintain  which 
Rome  closed  its  eyes  upon  all  scientific  learning,  Bruno  was  hunted 
from  land  to  land,  and  finally  burned  at  the  stake  in  Rome  in  1600 
by  the  Inquisition.*  The  fate  of  these  two  forerunners  of  Spinoza 
shows  the  conservatism  of  the  theology  of  both  branches  of  the 
Christian  Church,  and  proves  that  the  progressive  theologians 
of  Davies'  time  were  not  the  Puritans  but  the  pantheists. 

» Ibid.,  p.  153. 

2  Orr,  Calvin,  in  The  Reformers,  pp.  274-82. 

Draper,  Religion  and  Science,  p.  216. 

'  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  239-242. 

*  Draper,  pp.  178-180. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  149 

From  Davies'  relations  to  current  philosophy,  science,  and 
literature,  conservatism  in  his  religious  position  is  to  be  expected. 
Therefore  it  is  not  a  disappointment  that  "Nosce  Teipsum" 
shows  no  sign  of  the  influence  of  any  freer,  more  progressive 
thought  than  that  of  Calvin.  At  the  very  outset  of  the  poem 
occurs  a  discussion  of  the  fall  of  man  and  its  consequences  which 
is  Calvinistic  in  the  extreme.^  Man,  says  Davies,  was  made 
perfect. 

"God's  hand  had  written  in  the  hearts 
Of  the  first  parents,  all  the  rules  of  good." 

Not  only  his  moral  but  his  intellectual  nature  was  in  the  image  of 

God. 

"  Their  reason's  eye  was  sharpe  and  cleere. 
And  (as  an  eagle  can  behold  the  sunne) 
Could  have  approcht  th'  Eternall  Light  as  neere, 
As  the  intellectuall  angels  could  have  done." 

To  man  in  this  perfect  state  the  "Spirit  of  Lies"  suggested  the 
desire  to  know  evil,  which  they  could  only  know  by  doing  it. 

"Ill  they  desir'd  to  know,  and  ill  they  did; 
And  to  give  Passion  eyes,  made  Reason  blind." 

As  passion  awaked,  and  as  experience  became  man's  teacher, 
reason  died. 

"But  then  grew  Reason  darke,  that  she  no  more, 
Could  the  faire  formes  of  Good  and  Truth  discern; 
Battes  they  became,  that  eagles  were  before : 
And  this  they  got  by  their  desire  to  learne." 

Of  course  the  idea  that  "by  one  man  sin  entered  into  the  world" 
is  as  old  as  Paul,  and  was  woven  inextricably  into  the  fabric  of 
mediaeval  and  modern  religious  thought  in  the  forms  given  to  it 
by  Augustine  and  Calvin.  No  priest  or  theologian,  except  such 
heretics  as  the  Traducians,  sought  for  any  origin  of  evil  other 
than  the  taste  of  that  forbidden  fruit  which 

"Brought  death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe." 

But  the  effect  of  the  Fall  on  the  intellect,  of  which  Davies  makes 
so  much,  has  been  shown  by  Professor  Sneath  to  be  a  characteristic 
teaching  of  Calvin,  based  on  his  reading  of  Augustine,  and  "not 

»  Davies'  Works,  ed.  by  Grosart,  Vol.  I,  pp.  15-16. 


150  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

-common  in  Christian  theology."^  Before  the  disobedience  of 
Adam,  as  Calvin  wrote,  "Man  excelled  in  these  noble  endowments 
in  his  primitive  condition,  when  reason,  intelligence,  prudence, 
and  judgment  not  only  sufficed  for  the  government  of  his  earthly 
life,  but  also  enabled  him  to  rise  up  to  God  and  eternal  happiness,"'^ 
After  the  Fall,  "soundness  of  mind  and  integrity  of  heart  were 
withdrawn.  .  .  .  For  although  there  is  still  some  residue  of  intelli- 
gence and  judgment,  we  cannot  call  a  mind  sound  and  entire 
which  is  both  weak  and  immersed  in  darkness.  .  .  .  Since  reason 
...  is  partly  weakened  and  partly  corrupted,  a  shapeless  ruin 
is  all  that  remains."^ 

Closely  connected  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall  is  that  of  original 
sin.  In  a  discussion  of  the  question  of  the  creation  of  the  soul, 
occurs  a  passage  that  answers  the  Traducians,  who  argued  that 
one  soul  must  spring  from  another  soul, 

"As  fire  from  fire,  or  light  from  Ught  doth  spring,"* 

because  otherwise,  if  God  created  each  soul  directly,  He  would  be 
"the  author  of  her  sinne."  In  this  passage  Davies  gives  elaborate 
proof  that,  although  God  is  the  direct  creator  of  every  soul,  the 
origin  of  sin  is  in  no  way  a  divine  responsibiUty.  God  is  perfectly 
able,  reasons  this  lawyer  turned  theologian,  to  create  the  soul 
without  creating  its  sin.  That  the  soul  must  be  created  by  God 
admits  of  several  proofs.'^  No  one  but  the  Almighty  could  create 
something  from  nothing,  therefore  the  soul  is  created  by  God. 
Further,  the  argument  continues, 

"  If  soules  doe  other  soules  beget, 

'Tis  by  themselves,  or  by  the  bodie's  power; 
If  by  themselves,  what  doth  their  working  let, 
But  they  might  soules  engender  every  hour?" 

That  such  engendering  does  not  take  place  is  a  second  proof  that 
soul  does  not  spring  from  soul.  Again,  such  a  derivation  of  the 
soul  would  involve  change  and  motion  of  one  into  the  other;  but 

»  E.  H.  Sneath,  Philosophy  of  Poetry,  pp.  55-57. 

"  Ibid.,  quoted  from  Beveridge's  translation  of  Calvin'a  Institutes,  Vol.  I, 
Bk.  I,  ch.  15,  sec.  12. 

*  Ibid.,  quoted  from  the  Institutes,  Vol.  I,  Bk.  II,  ch,  2,  sec.  12. 

*  Davies,  ed.  by  Grosart,  Vol.  I,  pp.  47-48. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  49-52. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  151 

"Change  and  motion  still  corruption  beare; 
How  shall  we  then  the  soule  immortall  prove?" 

By  a  succession  of  such  proofs,  of  which  the  three  given  will 
supply  sufficient  example,  Davies  substantiates  his  proposition. 
The  casuistic  method  of  the  argument  is  unmistakable;  his  logic 
is  the  logic  of  the  schoolmen.  Elizabethan  in  his  feeling  for  the 
classics,  in  his  naive  directness,  in  his  fresh  and  modern  way  of 
presenting  many  an  accepted  truth,  in  his  receptive  attitude 
toward  such  scientific  discoveries  as  had  come  to  his  notice,  he 
saw  no  more  than  did  the  schoolm.en  that  the  things  of  the  spirit 
transcended  the  bounds  of  logic.  Perhaps  a  naturally  legal  mind 
beUeved  that  such  rules  of  logic  as  would  do  for  law  would  serve 
equally  well  for  religion.  Perhaps  the  natural  product  of  a 
credulous  age  was  the  supposition  that  because  one  beUeved  a 
thing  one  could  inevitably  prove  it.  An  absence  of  doubt  may 
imply  a  conviction  that  if  one  takes  the  trouble  one  can  prove  the 
proposition  which,  since  it  is  not  doubted,  must  be  provable. 
It  is  the  agnostic  age,  Uke  that  of  Tennyson,  which  brings  its 
doubters  to  embrace  by  faith  the  truths  that  never  can  be  proved. 
Having  proved  that  God  creates  the  soul  directly,  Davies 
proceeds  to  show  that  nevertheless  He  is  not  the  author  of  sin.^ 
And  here  Calvin's  influence  is  dominant  again.    God  is  the  Maker 

"  Of  all  the  Soules,  in  all  the  men  that  be : 
Yet  their  corruption  is  no  fault  of  His, 
But  the  first  man's  that  broke  God's  first  decree." 

Sin,  which  began  with  Adam,  was  transmitted  from  generation 
to  generation.  In  the  person  of  Adam  were  included  all  his 
descendants;  he  was  the  root  and  his  posterity  the  branches,  but 
the  root  and  the  branch  "are  but  one  tree."  The  corruption 
of  the  root  means  that  the  whole  tree  is  corrupt.  Therefore,  as 
soon  as  the  soul,  which  God  makes  "good,  rich,  and  fair,"  comes 
into  union  with  the  body,  which  is  the  heir  of  Adam,  the  whole 
man  is  depraved. 

The  germ  of  this  doctrine,  too,  is  as  old  as  Paul;  "by  one  man's 
disobedience  many  were  made  sinners."  But  the  form  in  which 
Davies  studied  it  was  Calvin's — a  form  Hkely  to  have  been  as 
surprising  to  the  loving-hearted  apostle  to  the  Gentiles  as  it  is 
incredible  to  the  modern  Christian.     "  In  regard  to  human  nature," 

» Ilnd.,  pp.  52-60. 


152  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

wrote  Calvin,  "Adam  was  not  merely  the  progenitor,  but,  as  it 
were,  a  root,  and  by  his  corruption  the  whole  human  race  was 
deservedly  vitiated."^  "Adam's  ill  desert,"  says  Davies,  is 
"transferred  unto  his  guilty  race,"  Calvin,  too,  considered  guilt 
an  inheritance.  "Original  sin  may  be  defined  as  an  hereditary 
corruption  and  depravity  of  our  nature.  "^ 

Moreover,  Davies,  like  Calvin,  defends  the  justice  of  God  in 
the  apparently  unjust  decree  of  punishment  for  all  men  because 
of  one  man's  sin.    Why  did  not  "His  high  Providence"  prevent 
"The  declination  of  the  first  man's  will?" 

In  a  few  lines  the  amateur  theologian,  apparently  unaware  of  the 
magnitude  of  the  task  he  is  attempting  so  ingenuously,  disposes 
of  the  age-long  inconsistency  between  the  sovereignty  of  man  and 
the  sovereignty  of  God.  In  his  answer  to  the  problem,  Davies 
allows  more  room  for  the  operation  of  free  will  than  did  Calvin, 
who  was  a  thoroughgoing  determinist.  If  God  had  prevented 
Adam  from  sinning, 

"It  had  bene  one,  as  if  His  Word  had  said, 
I  will  henceforth  that  Man  no  man  shall  bee, 

"For  what  is  Man  without  a  mooving  mind. 
Which  hath  a  judging  wit,  and  chusing  will? 
Now,  if  God's  power  should  her  election  bind. 
Her  motions  then  would  cease  and  stand  all  still." 

In  other  words,  man  was  no  man  if  his  motives  were  not  his  own. 
The  reason  for  the  existence  of  the  soul  in  man  was  "that  he  should 
his  Maker  know  and  love,"  But  there  is  no  merit  in  love  if  it 
"be  compeld  and  cannot  chuse."  Calvin's  persecution  of  Jerome 
Bolsec  shows  that  he  had  little  tolerance  for  a  belief  in  free  will.^ 
It  has  been  suggested  that  perhaps  his  uncompromising  adherence 
to  the  doctrine  of  predestination  was  due  to  an  unwillingness  to  be 
involved  in  the  inconsistencies  arising  from  the  attempt  to  reconcile 
two  conflicting  theories,  Davies,  who  feels  no  such  hesitancy, 
seems  here  to  show  the  influence  of  Aquinas,  who  held  that  free 
will  was  indispensable  as  a  basis  for  morality,  since  acts  were  not 
virtuous  if  compulsory,*    Aquinas  made  no  satisfactory  reconcilia- 

*  Sneath,  p.  135,  quoted  from  Calvin's  Institutes,  Vol.  I,  Bk,  II,  ch,  1,  sec.  6. 
'  Ibid.,  quoted  from  the  Institutes,  Vol,  I,  Bk,  II,  ch.  1,  sec.  8. 

3  Dyer,  Calvin,  pp.  224-237. 

*  Perrier,  Scholasticism. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  153 

tion  of  the  two  contradictory  principles,  any  more  than  did 
Davies.  But  in  one  way  both  Calvin  and  Davies  have  advanced 
beyond  the  schoolmen.  They  are  not  satisfied  with  the  conclu- 
sions of  their  own  logic.  Writing  of  himself,  Calvin  said,  "The 
sum  of  his  doctrine  is,  that  God,  in  a  wonderful  manner,  and  by 
methods  unknown  to  us,  governs  all  things  to  what  end  he  pleases, 
so  that  his  eternal  will  is  the  first  cause  of  everything.  But  why 
God  should  will  what  appears  to  us  by  no  means  fit  and  proper 
he  acknowledges  to  be  incomprehensible."^     So  also  Davies: 

"Then  let  us  praise  that  Power,  which  makes  us  be 
Men  as  we  are,  and  rest  contented  so; 
And  knowing  Man's  fall  was  curiositie, 
Admire  God's  counsels,  which  we  cannot  know." 

In  many  minor  details  Davies  showed  himself  willing  to  accept 
on  credence  the  dictum  of  the  church  of  his  time.  He  had  a 
childlike  faith  in  the  legends  of  "the  proud  towre  whose  points 
the  clouds  did  hit,"^  of  the  creation  of  woman  from  the  rib  of 
Adam,^  of  the  forming  of  man  from  the  dust  of  the  ground;*  he 
believed  willingly  in  the  virgin  birth^  and  the  plan  of  salvation 
by  the  death  of  Christ;^  he  agreed  with  contemporary  Presby- 
terians that 

"Our  Wit  is  given,  Ahnighty  God  to  know; 
Our  Will  is  given  to  love  Him,  being  known,"' 

a  declaration  later  to  be  paraphrased  in  the  famous  "Man's 
chief  end"  of  the  Westminster  Shorter  Catechism;  he  concurred 
absolutely  in  the  worship  of  the  Trinity,  carrying  his  belief  even 
to  the  verge  of  superstition,  when  he  likens  sense,  wit,  and  will, 
the  three  powers  of  the  soul,  to 

"A  shadow  of  the  blessed  Trinitie;"* 

he  echoes  Calvin  again,  as  well  as  all  previous  orthodox  theologians, 
in  his  belief  in  predestination : 

"First,  God  from  infinite  eternitie 

Decreed,  what  hath  been,  is,  or  shall  bee  done; 
And  was  resolv'd,  that  every  man  should  bee. 
And  in  his  turne,  his  race  of  life  should  run."» 

>  Dyer,  p.  222.  « Ibid.,  pp.  28,  58. 

2  Davies,  ed.  by  Grosart,  Vol.  I,  p.  28.  '  Ibid.,  p.  80. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  51.  8/Wd.,  p.  81. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  45.  » Ibid.,  p.  53. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  51, 


154  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

But  most  of  all  does  he  seem  a  product  of  an  age  just  emerging 
from  the  domination  of  scholasticism  in  his  attempt  at  proof  of 
immortality.  It  is  a  brilliant  example  of  proof  defensive  rather 
than  constructive;  he  beheves  first,  and  afterwards  produces 
proof  to  support  his  belief,  instead  of  proving  first,  and  believing 
only  that  for  which  proof  gives  ground.  The  second  course  is 
logical,  if  Ukely  to  end  in  scepticism;  but  an  effort  to  prove  the 
tenets  of  an  intuitive  faith  is  illogical  because  superfluous,  and  is 
bound  to  end  either  in  utter  rout  or  in  a  loss  of  intellectual  sincerity 
— that  is,  unless  the  reasoner  has  the  childhke  mind  of  a  Davies, 
which  will  let  him  think  he  has  proved  his  position  whether  he 
has  or  not. 

Although  immortaUty  is  a  fundamental  Christian  doctrine,  it  is, 
of  course,  not  peculiar  to  Christianity.  Traces  of  other  influences 
than  those  of  Calvin  and  the  schoolmen  may  be  found  among  the 
reasons  Davies  alleges.  Cicero  and  Aristotle  are  certainly  to  be 
identified,^  and  in  the  portions  of  the  poem  which  do  not  seem 
traceable  to  one  of  these  three  influences,  it  is  hard  to  distinguish 
just  how  much  of  the  argument  is  Davies'  own.  At  all  events, 
there  is  not  an  idea  suggested  that  would  have  been  too  progressive 
or  too  advanced  for  the  schoolmen  to  have  presented,  if  they  had 
thought  of  it.  A  brief  outline  of  this  portion  of  the  poem^  will 
allow  its  logic  to  speak  for  itself. 

First,  man  has  a  passion  for  knowledge,  but  his  life  "so  fast 
away  doth  slide"  that  he  has  not  time  to  attain  it.  Therefore, 
if  this  desire  for  knowledge  is  not  to  be  futile, 

''  our  knowledge,  which  is  here  begun. 
Hereafter  must  bee  perfected  in  heaven." 

Second,  the  fact  that  the  soul's  aspiration  is  toward  God  shows 
that  the  soul,  like  God,  must  be  eternal.  The  argument  is  by 
analogy : 

"  Water  in  conduit  pipes  can  rise  no  higher 
Than  the  wel-head  from  whence  it  first  doth  spring." 

Again,  if  death  were  the  end  of  all,  not  even  a  noble  soul  could  so 
far  go  against  nature  as  to  feel  the  contempt  for  death  which 
"the  world's  best  spirits"  feel,  preferring  honor  to  life,  and  daring 

iSneath,  pp.  19^211. 

*  Davies,  ed.  by  Grosart,  pp.  82-116. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  155 

to  undergo  all  sorts  of  perils.  Nor,  if  death  ended  all,  would  the 
wicked  be  so  afraid  of  death.  The  universal  desire  of  men  for 
immortality  seems  to  Davies  a  convincing  proof  of  it.  Last  of 
all,  the  very  fact  that  men  are  able  to  discuss  an  immortal  thing 
shows  their  capacity  for  immortaUty: 

"  If  himself  were  but  a  mortall  thing, 
He  could  not  judge  immortall  things  at  all." 

Having  proved  his  behef  to  his  own  satisfaction,  Davies  proceeds 
to  refute  objections.  If  the  soul  does  not  grow  old  or  become 
corrupted, 

"How  comes  it  then  that  aged  men  do  dote?" 
and 

"How  can  there  idiots  then  by  nature  bee?" 

Davies  answers,  in  this  case  with  true  modern  insight,  that  these 
defects  are  due  to  imperfections  in  the  physical  structure  which  is 
the  instrument  of  the  soul : 

"We  must  not  blame  Apollo,  but  his  lute. 
If  false  accords  from  her  false  strings  be  sent." 

A  second  objection  arises.  If  the  body  dies,  the  soul  has  no 
instrument  through  which  to  exert  its  powers,  and  is  practically 
dead  itself.  By  analogy,  Davies  argues  from  the  case  of  a  man 
who  can  play  the  lute  well  and  is  a  good  horseman. 

"Though  both  his  lute  and  horse  he  take  away. 
Doth  he  not  keep  his  former  learning  still?" 

To  the  query  how  the  soul  will  be  able  to  know  or  perceive  anything 
when  it  no  longer  has  the  medium  of  sense  to  bring  it  impressions, 
the  reply  is  that  in  another  world  there  may  be  other  means  of 
receiving  impressions.  The  soul  living  in  the  body  is  compared 
to  the  child  before  birth,  nourished  quite  differently  from  the 
way  in  which  he  is  fed  after  birth. 

"So,  when  the  Soule  is  borne  (for  Death  is  nought 
But  the  Soule's  birth), 

it  will  receive  impressions  in  a  different  way  from  that  of  this 
world.     Again,  asked  why  souls,  if  they  are  immortal,  do  not 


return, 


"to  bring  us  newes 
Of  that  strange  world,  where  they  such  wonders  see," 


156  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Davies  replies  that  the  soul  which  has  taken  up  its  new  abode  in 
heaven  has  no  more  interest  in  the  earth,  which  it  scorns;  while 
the  soul  that  is  "detruded  down  to  Hell"  is  tied  and  imprisoned, 
unable  to  return  if  it  would.  The  last  objection  of  all  is  that  the 
whole  belief  in  immortality  is  a  lie,  promulgated  for  a  useful 
purpose: 

"Politike  men  have  thought  it  not  amisse. 
To  spread  this  lye,  to  make  men  virtuous  so." 

The  answer,  clever  as  repartee  but  not  convincing,  is  that  although 
virtue  is  a  good  thing,  a  lie  is  a  poor  way  to  spread  it,  since 

"Vertue  and  Truth  do  ever  best  agree." 

Summing  up,  Davies  is  assured  that  the  strongest  reason  of  all 
for  believing  in  immortality  is  the  universal  acceptance Jof  the 
doctrine. 

"For  how  can  that  be  false,  which  every  tongue 
Of  every  mortal  man  affirmes  for  true? 
Which  truth  hath  in  all  ages  been  so  strong, 
As  lodestone-hke,  all  hearts  it  ever  drew. 

"For,  not  the  Christian,  or  the  Jew  alone. 

The  Persian,  or  the  Turke,  acknowledge  this; 
This  mysterie  to  the  wild  Indian  knowne. 
And  to  the  Canniball  and  Tartar  is." 

Another  tenet  in  Davies'  creed  made  necessary  a  behef  in  immor- 
tality. Without  such  a  belief,  what  was  to  become  of  the  idea  of  a 
wise  and  overruling  providence?  Davies  still  adhered  to  an  idea 
of  man's  importance  which  the  scientific  studies  of  the  next  two 
centuries  were  to  make  untenable,  and  which  Pope  was  to  deride 
in  that  passage  of  the  "Essay  on  Man"  that  shows  man  to  be 
only  a  single  link  in  the  chain  of  the  whole  creation.  A  world 
whose  rank  and  file  had  not  yet  accepted  Copernicus  still  looked 
upon  man  as  the  center  of  creation.  If  the  world  was  created 
only  for  man's  use,  asks  Davies,  how  is  there  any  wisdom^or 
justice  in  God  apart  from  man's  immortality? 

"If  man  doe  perish  like  a  withered  grasse. 
How  doth  God's  Wisedom  order  things  below? 

"If  death  do  quench  us  quite,  we  have  great  wrong, 
Sith  for  our  service  all  things  else  were  wrought; 
That  dawes,  and  trees,  and  rocks,  should  last  so  long, 
When  we  must  in  an  instant  passe  to  nought." 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  157 

Moreover,  the  life  of  the  soul  is  incomplete  without  a  life  after 
death.  For  the  soul  has  three  powers,  the  quickening  power, 
the  power  of  sense,  and  the  power  of  reason;  and  it  must  have  a 
life  to  correspond  to  each.  The  life  of  the  unborn  child  in  the 
womb  depends  on  the  quickening  power  of  the  soul;  life  upon 
earth  exercises  the  power  of  sense;  but  the  power  of  reason  has  no 
chance  to  develop  without  a  heavenly  life.  The  desertion  of  the 
body  by  the  soul  men  call  death; 

"but  were  it  knowne  to  all. 
What  life  our  soules  do  by  this  death  receive, 
Men  would  it  birth  or  gaole  delivery  call. 

"In  this  third  life,  Reason  will  be  so  bright. 

As  that  her  sparke  will  like  the  sun-beames  shine; 
And  shall  of  God  enjoy  the  reall  sight." 

This  extended  proof  of  immortality  is  interesting,  not  for  its 
argument,  which  is  trite  and  often  fallacious,  but  for  its  disclosure 
of  the  writer,  not  as  a  metaphysician  but  as  a  practical  philosopher 
full  of  homelj^  common  sense.  The  more  Davies  argues  upon 
abstractions  the  more  clearly  does  he  show  that  he  was  not  a 
metaphysician,  but  merely  a  keen  observer  of  the  everyday 
things  around  him  and  a  wise  judge  of  human  nature.  Some  of 
the  analogies,  by  which,  rather  than  by  fine-drawn  syllogisms,  he 
makes  his  meaning  clear,  suggest  that  he  and  Franklin  might 
have  been  kindred  spirits,  and  indicate  a  kinship  with  Montaigne 
and  Bacon  that  puts  him  in  the  van  of  the  thinkers  of  his  time. 
When  he  wishes  to  show  that  the  mind's  power  of  knowledge  was 
not  given  for  such  imperfect  use  as  this  life  permits,  he  writes 
simply,  saving  pages  of  theorizing, 

"God  never  gave  a  power  to  one  whole  kind. 
But  most  part  of  that  kind  did  use  the  same; 
Most  eyes  have  perfect  sight,  though  some  be  blind; 
Most  legs  can  nimbly  run,  though  some  be  lame."^ 

To  supply  a  reason  why  men  may  believe  that  souls  live  on,  even 
though  they  do  not  return  from  the  hereafter,  he  argues, 

"If  we  beleeve  that  men  doe  live 
Under  the  Zenith  of  both  frozen  Poles, 
Though  none  come  thence  advertisement  to  give; 
Why  beare  we  not  the  like  faith  of  our  soules?"^ 

'  Ibid.,  p.  84. 
» Ibid.,  p.  109. 


158  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

And  to  reassure  the  dismay  caused  by  the  apparent  annihilation 
of  the  soul  at  the  death  of  the  body,  he  replies  with  quaint 
conviction, 

"We  have  no  cause  the  bodie's  death  to  feai'e. 
For  when  the  shell  is  broke,  out  comes  a  chick. "^ 

Similarly,  that  which  commands  attention  in  the  religious 
portions  of  "Nosce  Teipsum"  is  not  its  well-worn  theology,  but 
the  fresh,  eager  spirit  of  enthusiasm  that  gives  reahty  to  reiteration 
of  dogma  and  sincerity  to  assertion  of  creed.  However  conserva- 
tive his  religious  theory  may  be,  Davies'  personal  reflections  and 
comments  on  religious  subjects  have  a  modern  ring.  If  a  thinker 
arrives  at  a  real  truth,  indeed,  ancient  and  modern  are  hardly 
the  terms  to  apply,  since  truth  is  not  for  an  age  but  for  all  time. 
Who  first  thought  that  "When  the  devil  was  sick  the  devil  a 
monk  would  be"?  Whoever  originated  the  aphorism,  Davies 
has  his  own  terse  rendering  of  it : 

"Who  ever  sees  these  irreligious  men. 

With  burthen  of  a  sicknesse  weake  and  faint; 
But  heares  them  talking  of  Religion  then, 
And  vowing  of  their  soules  to  every  saint?"' 

Equally  condensed  and  equally  thoughtful  is  his  reflection  upon 
the  food  of  the  soul : 

"Bodies  are  fed  with  things  of  mortall  kind. 
And  so  are  subject  to  mortalitie; 
But  Truth  which  is  eternall,  feeds  the  mind ; 
The  Tree  of  Ufe,  which  will  not  let  her  die."^ 

Most  modern  in  thought  of  any  religious  statement  in  the  poem 
is  the  stanza  which  expresses  Davies'  theory  of  the  incarnation: 

"It  exceeds  man's  thought,  to  thinke  how  hie 

God  hath  raised  Man,  since  God  a  man  became."^ 

Consciously  or  not,  the  old-time  poet  has  hit  upon  a  far-reaching 
religious  discovery — that  incarnation  means  not  only  God  in  man 
but  man  with  the  potentiahty  of  Godhood. 

This  rehgious  Davies  is  not  to  be  dismissed  without  a  word  of 
the  spirit  of  reverence,  characteristic  of  his  age,  which  inspires 
some  of  the  noblest  lines  of  his  poem.     Dignity  and  strength  and 

» Ibid.,  p.  113.  '  Ibid.,  p.  97. 

» Ibid.,  p.  92.  *  Ibid.,  p.  82. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  169 

music  are  all  present  in  the  passages  where  he  most  devoutly 
pours  out  his  sense  of  wonder  at  the  ways  of  God  with  man. 
One  such  passage  will  show  Davies  at  his  best — and  an  appreciation 
of  any  man's  work  should  always  take  leave  of  him  at  his  best: 

"Heaven  waxeth  old,  and  all  the  spheres  above 
Shall  one  day  faint,  and  their  swift  motion  stay ; 
And  Time  it  selfe  in  time  shall  cease  to  move; 
Only  the  Soule  survives,  and  lives  for  aye. 

"  Our  Bodies,  every  footstep  that  they  make, 
March  towards  death,  untill  at  last  they  die; 
Whether  we  worke,  or  play,  or  sleepe,  or  wake. 
Our  life  doth  pass,  and  with  Time's  wings  doth  fiie; 

"But  to  the  Soule  Time  doth  perfection  give. 
And  ads  fresh  lustre  to  her  beauty  still ; 
And  makes  her  in  eternall  youth  to  live. 
Like  her  which  nectar  to  the  gods  doth  fill."* 

That  Davies  could  be  so  direct,  so  concrete,  and  at  the  same 
time  so  sincere  and  devout  in  his  expression  of  religious  feeling  is 
perhaps  due  to  the  fact  that  he  was  not  a  professional  religionist. 
The  same  fact  undoubtedly  accounts  for  his  failure  to  make  in  his 
philosophy  of  religion  any  advance  step  beyond  the  theologians 
who  preceded  him.  That  advance  step  remained  to  be  taken  by 
a  poet  and  thinker,  who,  though  a  frivolous  man  of  the  world  and 
not  a  professional  theologian,  was  as  thoroughly  theological  in 
his  thoughtful  moments  as  any  divine  of  them  all.  Lord  Herbert 
of  Cherbury  set  in  motion  the  current  of  religious  thought  which, 
in  its  final  form,  the  "Essay  on  Man"  sums  up. 

Between  the  time  of  Davies  and  the  time  of  Herbert  the  ground 
had  been  prepared  for  the  growth  of  independent  thought.  The 
application  of  the  laws  of  reason  to  theology  was  first  apparent  in 
the  work  of  Davies'  contemporary  Hooker  (1594),  who  based  his 
teachings,  not  on  the  writings  of  the  fathers  or  the  decrees  of  the 
councils  nor  even  on  Scripture  itself,  but  on  what  reason  showed 
of  the  use  of  those  teachings  for  making  better  the  life  of  individual 
and  society.-  As  religious  questions  came  more  and  more  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  reason,  the  spirit  of  toleration  grew.  "As 
theology  became  more  reasonable,  it  became  less  confident,  and 


» JUd.,  pp.  98-99. 

*  Buckle,  History  of  Civilization ,  V 


ol.  I,  pp.  246-49. 


160  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

therefore  more  merciful."^  The  last  martyrdom  of  a  heretic 
in  England  took  place  in  1611;  and  by  the  time  of  Chillingworth, 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  Lord  Herbert,  men  were  free  to  hold 
what  religious  views  they  chose,  subject  to  no  persecution  other 
than  that  of  an  often  virulent  controversy  with  the  orthodox. 
Chillingworth,  in  his  "Religion  of  Protestants,"  1637,  wholly  cast 
aside  the  claims  of  authority  to  interfere  with  the  right  of  private 
judgment.  The  whole  fabric  of  religion  was  "made  to  rest  upon 
the  way  in  which  the  unaided  reason  shall  interpret  the  decrees 
of  an  onmipotent  God."^ 

Against  such  a  background  of  rationalism  developed  the  move- 
ment known  as  deism,  the  attempt  to  construct  a  theory  of  deity 
that  should  be  both  rational  and  universal.  The  confusion  of 
sects,  the  conflict  of  varying  doctrines,  the  concealment  of  the 
body  of  truth  beneath  the  multifold  garments  of  dogma  and 
superstition,  all  made  the  obvious  necessity  of  the  hour,  for  the 
mind  that  would  arrive  at  a  rational  religious  conclusion,  the 
determination  of  the  fundamentals  of  all  religion.  The  "De 
Veritate"  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  published  in  1624,  con- 
tained five  such  fundamentals — the  existence  of  God,  the  necessity 
to  worship  Him,  the  identity  of  worship  with  practical  morality, 
the  obligation  to  repent  and  forsake  sin,  and  the  certainty  of 
divine  recompense  here  and  hereafter.^  These  principles,  said 
Lord  Herbert,  were  the  nucleus  of  all  religions,  and  among  them 
of  primitive  Christianity  before  it  was  corrupted  by  ecclesiasticism. 
His  statement  came  to  be  known  as  the  "Five  Articles"  of  deism.* 
Throughout  the  ensuing  century  the  development  of  this  type  of 
theological  rationalism  continued,  in  conflict  with  more  orthodox 
thought,  which  was  bent  not  on  founding  a  rational  religion, 
but  on  showing  the  existence  of  a  basis  of  reason  for  the  accepted 
religion  of  revelation,  and  thus  founding  a  rational  Christianity,^ 
not  inconsistent  with  the  reverence  of  the  age  for  reason,  and  in 
line  with  the  scientific  achievements  of  the  century. 

Lord  Herbert,  indeed,  appeared  to  have  little  veneration  for 
Christianity,  or  revealed  religion.     That,  along  with  all  other 

1  Ibid.,  p.  249. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  253-54. 

'  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Vol.  I,  p.  84. 

*  Schaff-Herzog,  Article  Deism. 

*  Leslie  Stephen,  p.  85. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  161 

religious  sj'^stems,  he  subjected  to  the  test  of  reason,  refusing  to 
accept  any  man's  judgment  in  place  of  his  own.^  Outside  his 
five  principles,  all  dogma  was  "the  work  of  priests,  who  have 
endeavored  to  establish  their  own  influence  for  their  own  advantage 
by  slirouding  these  five  ideas  in  obscurely  worded  creeds."^ 
Christianity  he  believed  to  be  the  best  religion,  because  most 
easily  reducible  to  his  five  points.  But  he  refused  to  see  in  it  any 
special  revelation,  and  declared  that  virtue  was  the  test  of  a  man's 
religion,  whatever  creed  he  chose  to  adopt.^ 

The  deists  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  wrote 
much,  but  added  little  to  the  original  statement  of  their  position 
by  Lord  Herbert.  Very  few  of  the  writers  who  sought  to  follow 
the  "inward  light"  to  which  he  pointed  were  as  whollj'-  intellectual 
and  as  antagonistic  to  revealed  religion  as  were  he  and  his  disciple 
Charles  Blount.  Few  of  them  were  as  able  and  as  distinguished 
as  the  men  who  appeared  in  the  ranks  of  the  Christian  rationalists 
— Locke,  Berkeley,  and  Bentley,  Clarke,  Butler,  and  Warburton.* 
Of  these,  Locke,  the  most  purely  philosophical,  pubUshed  in  1695 
the  "Reasonableness  of  Cliristianity,"  which  comprised  a 
re-reading  and  a  new,  independent  interpretation  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  which  brought  to  light  the  purity  and  beauty  of 
Christianity  as  its  founder  intended  it  to  be,  swept  clean  of  the 
rubbish  of  the  theologians.  To  Locke,  Christianity  is  superior 
to  other  creeds  because  it  has  been  most  practically  useful  in 
making  God  known  to  men.^  Berkeley,  primarily  a  metaphysician, 
and  Bentley,  primarily  a  literary  critic,  engaged  in  the  deistic 
controversy  only  in  the  way  of  replies  to  the  utterances  of  their 
opponents.  Samuel  Clarke,  philosopher  and  divine,  clothing  his 
theology  in  mathematical  language  like  that  of  Hobbes  and 
Descartes,  delivered  two  series  of  Boyle  lectures  in  1704  and  1705, 
intended  to  prove,  by  arguments  similar  to  those  of  Descartes, 
Leibnitz,  and  Spinoza,  the  existence  and  goodness  of  God.^  Using 
the  old  ontological  proof,  he  showed  that  all  existence  was  con- 

'  Sidney  Lee,  Introduction  to  the  Autobiography  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Cher' 
bury,  p.  XXXV. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  xli. 

'  Ibid.,  pp.  xliii-iv. 

*  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Vol.  I,  p.  86. 
'  Ibid.,  pp.  95-98. 

« Ibid.,  pp.  120-129. 


162  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

ditioned  upon  a  self-existent  being,  or  great  first  cause.  So  far 
his  argument  was  at  one  with  the  deists.  But  he  went  on  by  a 
similar  chain  of  reasons  to  establish  the  truth  of  revealed  religion, 
basing  his  argument  on  the  identity  of  the  clear,  changeless,  and 
universal  law  of  nature  with  moral  obligation,  and  showing  that 
Christianity  was  a  complete  revelation  of  truth,  because  by  the 
tests  of  reason  it  conformed  to  the  law  of  nature. 

Both  Locke  and  Clarke  used  the  deistic  method  applied  to  the 
defense  of  a  rather  emasculated  Christianity.  Bishop  Butler,' 
opposing  the  ordinary  deist  position,  and  going  farther  in  his 
orthodoxy  than  the  rationalists  just  referred  to,  took  for  granted 
the  existence  of  God.  The  aim  of  his  argument  was  to  show  that 
the  God  seen  in  nature  was  the  same  as  the  God  seen  in  the  Chris- 
tian revelation.  The  laws  of  nature  were  the  laws  of  God.  And 
the  revelation  of  that  God  was  not  through  an  authoritative  book 
nor  did  it  rest  "on  certain  miracles  wrought  some  centuries  ago 
in  Palestine,  but  on  that  great  standing  miracle — the  oracle 
implanted  in  every  man's  breast."  So  says  Leslie  Stephen, 
adding,  "The  God  whom  Butler  worships  is,  in  fact,  the  human 
conscience  deified."  From  the  character  of  man's  conscience 
could  be  deduced  the  character  of  the  God  who  spoke  through  it. 
But  Butler,  who  was  no  abstract,  but  only  a  moral  and  utilitarian 
philosopher,  evaded  all  the  issues  raised  by  the  conflict  of  meta- 
physical with  religious  problems.  If  he  had  faced  those  issues  he 
would  have  seen  that  he  took  for  foundation  of  his  position  assump- 
tions which  had  themselves  to  be  proved  before  they  could  be  used 
as  foundations.  In  his  conviction  that  duty  was  the  solution  of  all 
problems,  and  that,  whether  one  followed  the  voice  of  the  God 
of  nature  or  that  of  the  God  of  Christian  revelation,  the  secret  of 
the  universe  was  revealed  only  through  morality,  he  reached  the 
same  conclusion  as  was  expressed  in  the  third  and  fourth  points 
of  the  deist  "Five  Articles."  But  he  differed  from  the  deists  in 
recognizing  that  evil  did  exist  in  the  world  of  nature.  "No 
religion  can  be  powerful  which  does  not  give  forcible  expression  to 
men's  conviction  of  the  prevalence  of  natural  and  moral  evil,  and 
of  their  intimate  connection.  The  shallow  optimism  of  the  deists 
blinked  the  obvious  facts.    Butler  recognized  them  manfully. "^ 


» Ibid.,  pp.  282,  287-88,  297,  306. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  307. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  163 

A  long  list  of  lesser  names  of  churchmen,  lawyers,  and  writers 
fills  up  the  ranks  of  the  Christian  rationalists  who  opposed  the 
deists.  Of  the  deists — sceptics,  free-thinkers,  or  atheists  as 
their  time  called  them — there  were  fewer,  only  two  of  whom  were 
conspicuous  figures  in  the  social,  political,  and  literary  life  of  the 
period.  These  two,  perhaps  because  their  rank  and  real  scholar- 
ship made  them  less  polemic  in  temper  than  men  who,  with  less 
learning  and  less  poHsh,  had  also  less  poise,  were  not  so  contro- 
versial in  their  writing  as  the  less  gifted  but  more  noisy  deists. 
John  Toland,  in  "Christianity  not  Mysterious,"  the  book  which 
in  1696  excited  a  storm  among  the  orthodox,  used  the  term  Chris- 
tianity to  mean  religion  in  its  purest  form.  As  such  it  contained 
nothing  mysterious:  "There  is  nothing  in  the  Gospels  contrary 
to  reason,  nor  above  it;  and  no  Cliristian  doctrine  can  properly 
be  called  a  mystery."^  The  statements  in  the  accepted  creed 
which  were  mysterious  were  therefore  false  doctrines  superimposed 
upon  pure  religion.  Nothing  in  the  Bible  or  in  any  system  of 
interpretation  of  it  was  to  be  believed  without  strict  challenge  by 
the  laws  of  reason.-  Anthony  Collins,  in  his  "Discourse  of 
Freethinking,"  1713,  progressed  farther  along  the  same  track. 
Since  all  belief  was  to  bear  the  test  of  reason,  obviously  every 
independent  thinker  must  be  free  to  investigate  the  grounds  of 
his  belief,  untrammeled  by  the  authority  of  church  or  creed. 
And  in  Collins's  view,  everything  supernatural  was  irrational.^ 
In  a  later  book^  he  engaged  in  a  critical  dissection  of  the  prophecies 
of  the  Old  Testament,  on  which,  he  claimed,  Christianity  was 
based;  and  in  showing  their  lack  of  reason  seemed  to  display  the 
flimsy  foundation  of  the  accepted  creed.  The  prophecies  were  all 
very  well,  but  they  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  New  Testament; 
whereupon  the  belief  in  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus  broke  down 
for  lack  of  prophetic  support.^  The  answer  of  the  orthodox 
party  was  that  if  there  were  no  proof  of  Christianity  from  prophecy, 
at  least  there  was  plenty  from  the  New  Testament  miracles. 
This  supplied  a  theme  for  the  maddest  and  most  abusive  of  the 
deists,  Thomas  Woolston,  who  in  a  series  of  what  Leslie  Stephen 

'  Farrar,  History  of  Free  Thought,  p.  127. 

2  Stephen,  pp.  105-107. 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  205-206. 

*  Grounds  of  the  Christian  Religion,  1724. 
'  Farrar,  p.  135. 


164  The  Poet  as  '  Philosopher 

calls  "wild  rants"  sought  to  prove  that  there  was  no  truth  in 
the  miracles  except  a  mystic  and  allegorical  one.^  His  work  was  too 
unbalanced,  too  vituperative,  to  add  anything  constructive  to  the 
deist  creed. 

All  these  writers  had  been  dealing  with  the  validity  of  the 
evidences  of  Christianity.  Another  group  turned  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  truth  of  its  doctrines.  In  1730,  Matthew  Tindal 
published  "Christianity  as  Old  as  the  Creation,"  a  book  the 
title  of  which  is  self-explanatory.  True  religion  had  existed  as 
long  as  the  world  had  stood,  in  the  form  of  a  perfect  moral  and 
natural  law  laid  down  by  a  perfect  God.  Christianity,  in  the 
form  given  to  it  by  its  founder,  was  merely  what  Tindal  called  a 
"republication"  of  this  natural  moral  law,  the  extent  of  which, 
amid  the  mass  of  accumulated  dogma  and  superstition,  could  be 
discovered  by  the  human  reason.  The  rest  was  priestcraft.^ 
Morgan,  the  physician,  and  Chubb,  the  uneducated  tallow- 
chandler,  carried  on  the  controversy  in  the  days  of  its  decUne, 
after  1730,  but  contributed  nothing  new  to  the  thought  of  their 
forerunners. 

In  the  meantime,  one  of  the  really  brilUant  minds  of  the 
period,  having  allied  itself  with  the  deist  position,  was  approaching 
the  subject  rather  from  the  ethical  than  from  the  theological 
angle.  Natural  law,  which  was  the  law  of  God,  enjoined  morality, 
said  Shaftesbury.  Religion  was  a  means  to  the  end  of  morality. 
Therefore  such  a  religion  as  produced  the  best  results  in  the  form 
of  practical  virtue  was  the  religion  that  would  best  stand  the  test 
of  reason.  Shaftesbury  made  no  direct  attack  upon  revealed 
reUgion;  but  the  influence  of  the  deist  controversy  was  tacitly 
apparent  in  the  contemptuous,  sometimes  mocking  indifference 
which  he  showed  toward  all  accepted  creeds,  as  he  went  about  to 
formulate  the  system  of  rational  religion  that  became  the  platform 
of  the  Moral  Sense  school.  In  a  discussion  Uke  the  present  one, 
leading  to  a  comparison  of  Pope  with  the  religious  thought  that 
preceded  him,  the  excuse  for  so  detailed  a  study  of  deistic  argument 
as  the  foregoing  is  that  it  set  in  motion  the  thought  currents  on 
the  stream  of  which  Shaftesbury  and  BoUngbroke,  the  guiding 
influences  in  Pope's  philosophical  development,  were  carried  to 
the  great  sea  of  universal  harmony  at  which  their  thought  arrived. 

» Ibid.,  pp.  136-37.  ^  Stephen,  pp.  136-44. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  165 

For  harmony  was  the  keynote  and  the  overtone  of  Shaftesbury's 
system  of  ethics. 

In  brief  outline,  Shaftesbury's  tenets  were  few  and  simple; 
because  he  differed  from  the  controversial  deists  in  being  con- 
structive rather  than  destructive,  they  are  easy  to  formulate. 
There  was  a  God,  whose  existence  was  proved  by  the  order  and 
design  in  the  universe.  This  universally  benevolent  God  animated 
all  nature  as  the  soul  animated  the  body.  That  God  must  be  all 
good  followed  from  the  fact  that  He  was  universal,  since  evil 
could  only  exist  where  one  interest  opposed  another,  and  in  a 
universal  being  no  such  opposition  was  possible.  Since  God  was 
all  good,  everything  in  nature  was  for  the  best.  What  seemed 
like  evil  was  really  good,  when  looked  at  not  in  isolation  but  in 
its  relation  to  the  whole.  And  the  whole  included  not  only  the 
present  but  a  futm'e  life,  where  the  inequalities  of  the  present 
would  be  adjusted.  In  man,  the  controlling  principle  was  an 
innate  moral  sense,  by  which  he  approved  of  right  and  disapproved 
of  wrong.  Man  was  a  naturally  benevolent  being;  virtue  in 
action  was  the  expression  of  this  native  benevolence  and  social 
love.^ 

Bolingbroke's  philosophy  has  been  seen  to  be  a  compendium 
of  the  philosophical  thought  of  the  time  preceding  him.  His 
religious  thought  is  no  less  a  composite.  Writing  at  a  time  when 
the  heats  of  controversy  were  cooling,  and  when  free  thought  in 
the  form  of  deism  had  run  its  course,  he  comprised  in  his  rehgious 
system,  if  opinions  so  superficial  and  lacking  in  conviction  as 
Bolingbroke's  can  be  dignified  by  the  name  of  religion,  both  the 
destructive  argument  of  writers  from  Toland  to  Morgan,  and  the 
constructive  reasoning  of  Lord  Shaftesbury.  Like  the  deists, 
he  sought  to  substitute  reason  for  revelation;  like  the  deists, 
he  scoffed  at  the  supernatural,  the  mysterious,  the  miraculous, 
used  to  support  the  accepted  creed;  like  the  deists,  he  railed  at 
the  substitution  of  a  priest-made  tradition  for  the  religion  of 
nature.  At  the  same  time,  like  Shaftesbury  he  held  to  the  belief 
in  a  divine  ruler  of  creation,  a  universal  harmony,  and  a  system 
where  all  that  was  was  right.  He  differed  from  Shaftesbury, 
however,  in  the  characteristic  contention  of  his  theological  doctrine. 
God  might  be  all  wise  and  all  powerful,  as  could  be  proved  from 
the  evident  appearance  of  those  attributes  in   creation.      But 

'  Fowler,  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson,  Part  I,  ch.  3  and  4. 


166  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

there  was  no  proof  of  God's  justice  and  goodness;  too  many 
things  in  the  world  were  unjust  and  unkind  to  believe  in  that. 
Only  men  could  be  seen  to  be  good  and  just.  The  inconsistency 
of  such  a  position,  in  a  beUef  that  was  supposed  to  maintain 
universal  harmony,  is  obvious.  But  Bolingbroke  was  little 
troubled  anywhere  by  a  passion  for  consistency;  his  avoidance  of 
that  bugbear  of  small  minds  might  have  proved  him  great,  had 
other  pettinesses  not  interfered. 

In  relation  to  the  religious  thought  preceding  him,  the  position 
of  BoUngbroke,  the  last  voice  of  the  dying  deist  movement,  is 
the  position  of  Pope.  In  theology,  as  in  poetry.  Pope  speaks  for 
the  end  of  an  age.  There  is  no  need  to  examine  the  "Essay  on 
Man"  for  evidences  of  other  religious  influences  than  the  deistic 
controversy;  that  strife  dominated  the  thought  aUke  of  churchmen 
and  freethinkers  throughout  the  fifty  years  that  preceded  the  poem. 
Ecclesiastics  who  were  not  engaged  on  that  main  issue  were  busy 
with  the  color  of  vestments,  the  length  of  surplice  sleeves,  the 
exactitude  of  genuflexions,  and  other  such  liturgical  follies. 
Assuming,  then,  that  Pope  in  his  creed  reflected  the  deists,  among 
whose  number  his  master  was,  the  expectation  would  be  reasonable 
that  he  will  be  found  to  have  learned  his  theological,  as  his  philo- 
sophical, lesson  from  BoHngbroke.  Surprise  comes  with  the 
discovery  that  his  creed  is  Shaftesbury's  wholly — Bohngbroke's 
only  so  far  as  Bolingbroke's  coincided  with  Shaftesbury's.  Second- 
hand though  his  opinions  may  be,  Pope's  attitude  to  his  subject 
is  constructive.  His  concern  is  not  to  attack  church  or  creed, 
but  to  build  up  a  system  so  evidently  reasonable  as  to  supersede 
them.  A  controversial  attitude  implies  a  certain  degree  of  respect ; 
such  respect  is  Bolingbroke's  when  he  pays  revealed  Christianity 
the  compliment  of  refuting  its  evidences.  But  Shaftesbury  seems 
in  his  discussions  of  God,  the  universe,  immortality,  and  virtuo 
to  be  unaware  that  there  is  any  opposing  system  which  he  must 
displace;  it  is  as  if  he  assumed  that  any  rational  thinker  would 
hold  the  same  views  with  himself,  and  the  irrational  are  no  concern 
of  his.  Such  an  assumption  seems  to  underlie  Pope's  attitude. 
When  Pope  wished  to  confute,  he  turned  to  satire;  but  there  is 
no  satire  in  the  "Essay."  The  futility  of  theological  dispute 
must  have  been  present  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  in  the  dedication 
to  Lord  Bolingbroke:  "More  good  will  accrue  to  mankind  by 
attending  to  the  large,  open,  and  perceptible  parts,   than  by 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  167 

studying  too  much  such  finer  nerves  and  vessels,  the  uses  of  which 
will  forever  escape  our  observation.  The  disputes  are  all  upon 
these  last,  and  they  have  less  sharpened  the  wits  than  the  hearts 
of  men  against  each  other,  and  have  diminished  the  practice  more 
than  advanced  the  theory  of  morality."  So  Pope  sets  about  an 
attempt  to  steer  "betwixt  the  extremes  of  doctrines  seemingly 
opposite,"  a  moderate  course  animated  by  a  spirit  very  similar 
to  the  poised  and  temperate  habit  of  Lord  Shaftesbury, 

Whatever  is  remembered  or  forgotten  of  the  deists,  Lord 
Shaftesbury's  summary  of  their  shallow  optimism  will  not  be 
forgotten.  A  belief  that  "Whatever  is  is  right"  must  necessarily 
lie  back  of  an  intention  to  "vindicate  the  ways  of  God  to  man," 
since  only  ways  of  whose  justice  there  is  assurance  can  be 
vindicated. 

Pope  presents  several  proofs  that  heaven's  ways  and  plans  are 
good,  in  answer  to  hypothetical  suggestions  of  fault-finding  with 
things  as  they  are.     First  and  most  important, 

'  'Respecting  Man,  whatever  wrong  we  call, 
May,  must  be  right,  as  relative  to  all."i 

Man  is  not  an  isolated  being;  since  he  exists  only  as  one  link  in 
the  chain,  that  which  brings  pain  or  evil  upon  him  may  serve 
some  useful  purpose  for  the  whole.  Partial  evil  may  be  universal 
good.  Only  God  can  see  the  whole,  and  therefore  only  God  can- 
conceive  a  proper  plan  which  shall  be  best  for  all. 

"Each  individual  seeks  a  sev'ral  goal, 
But  Heav'n's  great  view  is  one,  and  that  the  whole. "^ 

Just  so  Shaftesbury  had  defended  the  perfection  of  an  apparently 
imperfect  universe:  "Now,  in  this  mighty  Union,  if  there  be 
such  relations  of  parts  to  one  another  as  are  not  easily  discovered, 
if  on  this  account  the  end  and  use  of  things  does  not  everywhere 
appear,  there  is  no  wonder.  .  .  .  For,  in  an  infinity  of  things  thus 
relative,  a  mind  which  sees  not  infinitely  can  see  nothing  fully."' 
Moreover,  man  should  not  complain  of  his  partial  knowledge. 
His  happiness  depends  upon  it.  If  everyone  knew  what  the 
futiu^e  held,  life  would  be  unendurable. 

"The  lamb  thy  riot  dooms  to  bleed  to-day, 
Had  he  thy  reason,  would  he  skip  and  play? 

'  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  I,  II.  51-52.  '  Mcrralists,  Part  II,  Sec.  4. 

2  Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  237-38. 


168  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

Oh  blindness  to  the  future!  kindly  given, 

That  each  may  fill  the  circle  mark'd  by  Heav'n."^ 

Again,  it  is  no  injustice  on  the  part  of  heaven  that  limits  man's 
endowments,  often  to  what  he  considers  his  detriment.  The 
hmitation  is  adapted  "to  what  his  nature  and  his  state  can  bear." 
His  senses  are  all  fitted  to  the  particular  use  he  has  for  them. 
Only  a  fly  needs  a  microscopic  sense  of  sight.  Keener  touch, 
smell,  or  hearing  would  cause  exquisite  torture,  till  a  man  would 
"die  of  a  rose  in  aromatic  pain,"  or  hsten  to  a  hitherto  unheard 
thunder  that  "stunn'd  him  with  the  music  of  the  spheres."^ 
The  reason  why  the  plans  of  providence  seem  imperfect  is  twofold : 
man  thinks  he  sees  everything,  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  sees 
only  the  small  part  of  the  universe  that  comes  within  his  own 
experience;  and  he  still  cKngs  to  the  antiquated  and  superstitious 
belief  that  he  is  the  center  of  the  universe.  Perishing  hero  and 
falling  sparrow  are  of  equal  importance  in  the  sight  of  God. 
But  man,  mistakenly,  feels  injustice  if  he  "alone  engross  not 
Heav'n's  high  care."  For  his  use  earth  revolves  and  the  heavenly 
bodies  shine.     " '  For  me,' "  says  Pride, 

"  'kind  Nature  wakes  her  genial  pow'r, 
Suckles  each  herb,  and  spreads  out  ev'ry  flow'r; 
Annual  for  me,  the  grape,  the  rose  renew 
The  juice  nectareous  and  the  balmy  dew; 
For  me  the  mine  a  thousand  treasures  brings; 
For  me  health  gushes  from  a  thousand  springs; 
Seas  roll  to  waft  me,  suns  to  light  me  rise; 
My  footstool  earth,  my  canopy  the  skies.'  "^ 

To  this  claim  that  the  great  end  of  creation  is  human  happiness, 
Pope  replies  with  a  series  of  questions. 

"Has  God,  thou  fool!  work'd  solely  for  thy  good. 
Thy  joy,  thy  pastime,  thy  attire,  thy  food? 
Who  for  thy  table  feeds  the  wanton  fawn. 
For  him  as  kindly  spreads  the  flow'ry  lawn; 
Is  it  for  thee  the  lark  ascends  and  sings? 
Joy  tunes  his  voice,  joy  elevates  his  wings. 
Is  it  for  thee  the  linnet  pours  his  throat? 
Loves  of  his  own  and  raptures  swell  the  note. 


» Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  I,  11.  81-86.  ^  /fti^^,^  Epistle  1, 11.  133-140. 

2  lUd.,  Epistle  I,  II.  183-204. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  169 

Know,  Nature's  children  all  divide  her  care; 
The  fur  that  warms  a  monarch  warmed  a  bear. 
While  man  exclaims,  'See  all  things  for  my  use!' 
'See  man  for  mine!'  replies  a  pampered  goose."^ 

But  this  deposition  of  man  from  his  self-assumed  dominance  is 
very  like  a  passage  where  Shaftesbury  answers  a  complaint  as  to 
man's  feebleness  in  contrast  to  the  beasts.  "You  might  as  well 
complain,"  he  writes,  "that  man  should  be  anything  less  than  a 
consummation  of  all  advantages  and  privileges  which  Nature  can 
afford.  Ask  not  merely,  why  man  is  naked,  why  unhoofed,  why 
slower-footed  than  the  beasts?  Ask  why  he  has  not  wings  also 
for  the  air,  fins  for  the  water,  and  so  on;  that  he  might  take 
possession  of  each  element,  and  reign  in  all.  This  would  be  to 
rate  him  high  indeed!  As  if  he  were,  by  nature.  Lord  of  All: 
which  is  more  than  I  could  wilhngly  allow. "^ 

Neither  Pope  nor  Shaftesbury  arrives  at  any  satisfactory 
explanation  of  the  origin  of  and  reason  for  evil.  The  so-called 
proof  that  everything  is  done  by  the  design  of  an  all-wise  and  all- 
good  first  cause  is  rather  assertion  than  proof,  and  seeks  by 
constant  reiteration  to  establish  itself.  "If  we  could  see  every- 
thing, we  would  know  that  in  its  proper  relations  nothing  is 
evil";  that  is  one-half  the  proof.  "If  we  did  not  know  evil,  we 
could  not  know  good";  that  is  the  other  half. 

"Better  for  us,  perhaps,  it  might  appear. 
Were  there  all  harmony,  all  virtue  here; 
That  never  air  or  ocean  felt  the  wind ; 
That  never  passion  discompos'd  the  mind. 
But  all  subsists  by  elemental  strife ; 
And  passions  are  the  elements  of  life."^ 

Shaftesbury,  too,  asserts  the  principle  of  contrast  as  essential  to 
consciousness,  when  he  writes,  "Much  is  alleged  in  answer,  to 
show  why  Nature  errs.  .  .  .  But  I  deny  she  errs;  and  when  she 
seems  most  ignorant  or  perverse  in  her  productions,  I  assert 
her  even  then  as  wise  and  provident,  as  in  her  goodhest  works. 
For  'tis  not  then  that  men  complain  of  the  world's  order,  or  abhor 
the  face  of  things,  when  they  see  various  interests  mixed  and 
interfering;  natures  subordinate,  of  different  kinds,  opposed  to  one 
another,  and  in  their  different  operations  submitted,  the  higher 

» Ibid.,  Epistle  III,  11.  27-46.  '  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  I,  11.  165-70. 

*  Moralists,  Part  II,  Sec.  4. 


170  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

to  the  lower,  "Tis  on  the  contrary,  from  this  order  of  inferior 
and  superior  things,  that  we  admire  the  world's  beauty,  founded 
thus  on  contrarieties:  whilst  from  such  various  and  disagreeing 
principles,  a  universal  concord  is  established."^ 

The  apparent  imperfection  of  the  present  is  with  Pope  as  with 
Shaftesbury  a  reason  for  holding  to  a  beUef  in  a  future  Ufe. 

"The  soul,  uneasy,  and  confin'd  from  home, 
Rests  and  expatiates  in  a  life  to  come."* 

So  Shaftesbury:  "The  plain  foundations  of  a  distributive  justice 
and  due  order  in  this  world,  may  lead  us  to  conceive  a  further 
building.  We  apprehend  a  larger  scheme,  and  easily  resolve 
ourselves  why  things  were  not  completed  in  this  state,  but  their 
accompUshment  reserved  rather  to  some  further  period."^ 
The  idea  of  the 

"stupendous  whole, 
Whose  body  Nature  is,  and  God  the  soul," 

is  Shaftesbury's;  on  the  other  hand,  the  identification  of  Nature 
with  God,  which  seems  evident  in  such  a  Hne  as 

"The  state  of  Nature  was  the  reign  of  God," 

is  common  property  of  the  deists  and  of  Bolingbroke,  but  does  not 
seems  to  occur  in  Shaftesbury's  rather  pantheistic  philosophy. 
For  the  deists,  God  was  apart  from  his  world,  not  immanent  in 
it.  Pope,  with  his  too  great  facility  at  making  his  own  whatever 
came  to  his  hand,  did  not  apparently  see  the  inconsistency  of 
professing  in  one  passage  a  deist's  creed,  and  in  another  a  panthe- 
ist's. His  method  is  accumulative  rather  than  eclectic.  And 
one  special  phase  of  his  argument  was  derived  from  Bolingbroke 
rather  than  Shaftesbury;  that  is  the  account  of  the  origin  of 
reUgion  in  its  historical  beginnings,  until,  from  revering  a  patriarch, 
man  came  to  look  beyond  him  to  a  Father-God.*  For  one  of  the 
matters  that  most  interested  BoUngbroke,  an  interest  in  which 
he  showed  himself  ahead  of  his  time,  was  the  history  and  the 
evolution  of  religion. 

Even  so  brief  a  survey  of  the  passages  which  reveal  the  religious 
position  of  Pope  shows,  then,  that  belief  in  God,  in  the  duty  of 

'■  Moralists,  Part  I,  Sec.  3. 

«  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  I,  11.  97-98. 

•  Moralists,  Part  II,  Sec.  3. 

*  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  III,  U.  215-268. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  171 

worshipping  Him,  in  the  necessity  of  virtue,  in  a  future  life  com- 
pleting the  present  imperfect  one,  all  tenets  of  the  deists'  religion 
of  reason  and  nature,  are  maintained  by  Pope,  largely  from  a 
Shaftesburian  angle.  But  religion  is  more  dependent  on  emotion 
than  on  reason.  Creed  is  a  product  of  the  intellect;  religion, 
which,  reduced  to  lowest  terms,  is  action  animated  by  feeling, 
springs  from  the  heart.  And  the  influence  of  the  deists  on  Pope's 
religious  position  is  most  apparent  in  the  absence  of  emotion  in 
the  "Essay."  His  ideas  about  religion  are  unexceptionable; 
but  back  of  them  throbs  no  heartbeat.  To  compare  the  detached 
attitude  of  Pope  toward  the  cold  and  unlovable  deity  created 
by  reason  with  the  ingenuous  and  enthusiastic  faith  of  Davies 
in  the  God  of  his  wonder  and  devotion,  or  with  the  intuitive 
outreaching  of  Tennyson  for  "that  God  who  ever  lives  and  loves," 
is  to  realize  the  deadening  effect  of  deism  on  EngUsh  religious 
thought.  Controversy  kills  enthusiasm  even  while  it  strengthens 
opinion.  That  which  has  to  be  contentiously  argued  about  loses 
its  charm.  An  over-reasoned  religion  is  no  exception  to  the 
homely  rule.  The  deists  were  so  interested  in  defending  their 
idea  of  God  that  they  had  no  attention  left  for  God  himself.  And 
it  is  hard  to  escape  the  impression  that,  while  to  Pope  his  friend 
Bolingbroke  was  near  and  real  enough  to  be  both  an  ideal  of 
conduct  and  an  object  of  worship,  the  Eternal  Cause  was  very 
remote,  very  abstract,  very  vague — a  being  one  might  worship, 
but  could  never  know  intimately  enough  to  love  or  to  imitate. 

Perhaps  this  very  sense  of  remoteness  accounts  for  the  reverence 
for  the  ways  of  God  which  is  the  most  sincere  element  in  Pope's 
religion.  In  his  reproof  of  man's  presumption  in  replying  against 
God,  he  seems  an  eighteenth  century  Job.  Presumptuous  man 
is  adjured  to  hope  humbly,  to 

"Wait  the  great  teacher  Death,  and  God  adore."^ 
Irony  meets  him  who  would  weigh  his  opinion  against  Providence; 
contempt  is  the  due  reward  of  the  "vile  worm"  who  would  dare 
suggest  the  breaking  of  the  great  universal  order  for  a  single 
individual's  pleasure.^  Contemplating  man's  pride  in  his  own 
achievements,  Pope  cries  out, 

"Go,  teach  Eternal  Wisdom  how  to  rule — 
Then  drop  into  thyself,  and  be  a  fool!"' 

'  Ibid.,  Epistle  I,  11.  91-92.  » Ibid.,  Epistle  II,  11.  29-30. 

>  Ibi<i.,  Epi3tle  I,  11.  257-58. 


172  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

This  august  being  to  whom  man's  whole  soul  is  to  submit  has  no 
care  for  the  individual;  the  laws  of  the  great  system  cannot  be 
broken : 

"When  the  loose  mountain  trembles  from  on  high, 
Shall  gravitation  cease  if  you  go  by?"^ 

There  was  no  room  in  this  conception  of  God  for  the  special 
providences  in  which  Davies  believed  so  firmly.  Pope's  deity 
was  not  the  God  of  Romanist  or  Calvinist  theology,  the  dispenser 
of  reward  or  punishment,  of  salvation  or  damnation.  Nor  was 
He  the  sweet  human  God  of  Tennyson,  making  known  His  nature 
through  "loveliness  of  perfect  deeds."  This  eighteenth  century 
God  was  synonymous  with  Nature,  synonymous  with  the  Force 
that  moves  the  universe;  a  God  like  that  of  the  Westminster 
divines,  "infinite,  eternal,  unchangeable,"  but  lacking  in  personal 
nearness,  and  wholly  unlovable.  He  was  the  Lord  of  the  whirlwind 
and  the  earthquake,  rather  than  He  of  the  stiU,  small  voice. 
He  was  the  source  of  eternal  hope,  to  be  trusted  blindly,  without 
even  so  much  question  as  an  effort  to  understand  His  ways  would 
entail.  Such  advice  sounds  inconsistent  enough  in  the  midst  of  a 
dissertation  whose  purpose  is  avowedly  to  explain  and  thus 
vindicate  the  ways  of  God.  The  whole  poem,  the  author  of 
which  exempts  himself  from  his  own  advice  not  to  presume  to 
scan  God,  is  an  attempt  to  explain  and  justify  a  system  which  he 
repeatedly  urges  needs  no  justification.  The  rationalist  who 
believes  in  no  special  providence  exhorts  man  to  trust  providence, 
and  even  while  he  counsels  trust  he  reasons  every  step  of  the  way 
toward  his  conviction,  with  a  dispassionate  coolness  of  ^nethod 
that  keeps  the  conviction  from  being  convincing. 

Consistency,  however,  is  no  more  a  virtue  of  Pope's  than  of 
Bolingbroke's.  The  man  who  sees  in  flashes  and  who  speaks  in 
epigrams  is  rarely  equipped  for  a  sustained  effort  of  logic.  Pope 
is  not  thinking  his  way  through  from  a  position  of  uncertainty  to  a 
logical  conclusion  necessitated  by  the  facts  of  nature  or  spirit. 
He  starts  with  a  presupposition,  and  bases  his  chain  of  argument 
on  the  very  hypothesis  which  the  argument  aims  to  prove.  Argu- 
ment in  a  circle  is  not  logical;  but  to  ask  Pope  to  be  logical  would 
be  like  asking  lightning  to  strike  twice  in  the  same  place.  In  so 
far  as  his  rationalistic  attitude  toward  his  subject  is  concerned, 

1  Ibid.,  Epistle  IV,  11.  127-28. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  173 

Pope  is  representative  of  the  temper  of  his  period;  but  in  his  own 
failure  as  a  rationalist  to  present  his  case  consistently,  he  falls 
short  of  reflecting  the  spirit  of  a  time  when  every  trained  mind 
prided  itself  on  dawless  logic,  and  when  the  best  thinkers  strove, 
like  Locke  and  Butler,  to  believe  nothing  beyond  what  reason 
supplied  proof  for.  The  very  quaUty  of  Pope's  flashing  and 
erratic  genius  made  adherence  to  logic  an  impossible  task.  He 
would  have  reflected  his  century  if  he  could;  that  he  did  not  is 
further  proof  of  the  inextinguishable  element  of  personal  quality 
that  raises  the  poet  above  the  level  of  his  fellows,  and  keeps  him 
from  being  no  more  than  an  echo. 

The  cold  and  impersonal  creed  of  Pope  represents  the  religious 
temper  of  the  cultured  English  mind  at  the  end  of  the  deist  contro- 
versy. The  deists  had  striven  by  reason  to  undermine  the  founda- 
tions of  the  accepted  faith,  in  so  far  as  that  faith  seemed  to  them 
a  tissue  of  romantic  and  superstitious  self-deceit.  The  orthodox, 
with  equal  zeal  and  equally  bj'  reason  as  an  instrument,  had 
defended  the  basis  of  revelation  and  authority  claimed  by  the 
established  creed.  As  a  result  of  the  strife,  spiritual  warmth  and 
beauty  had  disappeared.  ''Two  things,"  writes  Leslie  Stephen,^ 
"were  conspicuously  absent  from  that  form  of  religious  doctrine — 
faith  and  poetry.  What  remains  when  they  are  taken  away? 
Common  sense  and  candour."  Such  a  remainder  might  supply 
the  place  of  religion  for  the  enlightened  classes,  to  M'hom  sound 
common  sense  and  a  sincere  search  for  truth  might  be  sufficient 
spiritual  incentive.  But  for  the  unenlightened  or  half-enlightened 
masses,  for  whom  religion  is  always  a  matter  of  emotion  and 
enthusiasm,  a  rationalized  creed  meant  nothing.  The  established 
church,  with  its  doctrine  robbed  of  superstition  and  tradition, 
offered  the  people  at  large  little  more  than  a  mechanical  and 
unillumined  ritual.  If  Pope  expresses  the  attitude  of  the  cultured 
mind  toward  religion,  perhaps  George  Eliot's  Dolly  Winthrop 
may  be  thought  of  as  expressing  the  religious  intelligence  of  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  folk  in  the  country  parishes.  "I  can  never 
rightly  know  the  meaning  o'  what  I  hear  at  church,  but  I  know 
it's  good  words,  I  do." 

A  religion  so  lacking  in  substance,  color,  and  feeling  could  not 
control  the  popular  allegiance  without  an  infusion  of  new  life. 
The  failure  of  so  purely  intellectual  a  religion  to  come  into  vital 

'  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Vol.  II,  p.  335. 


174  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

touch  with  the  needs  and  desires  of  the  soul  of  the  masses  made  the 
contagion  of  such  a  movement  as  the  Wesleyan  inevitable.  By 
its  adherence  to  and  sympathy  with  old,  popular  religious  traditions 
and  superstitions,  Methodism  met  the  crowd  on  its  own  intellectual 
level.  By  its  refusal  to  countenance  the  results  of  scientific 
research  it  satisfied  the  orthodox  and  the  conservative.  By  its 
common  sense  teaching  of  morality  it  appealed  to  the  man  of 
practical  mind.  In  its  hatred  of  Calvinism  and  enthusiastic 
teaching  of  free  will  it  was  in  line  with  the  movement  of  the  late 
eighteenth  century  toward  a  reahzation  of  the  value  of  the  indi- 
vidual. Predestination  is  as  much  a  form  of  tyranny  as  is  autoc- 
racy. But  most  of  all  Methodism,  by  its  understanding  of  crowd 
psychology,  by  its  emphasis  on  outward  demonstration,  by  its 
simple  pleadings  with  men  to  come  into  personal  relation  with  a 
very  concrete  and  personal  God,  afforded  an  emotional  outlet 
for  the  dammed-up  streams  of  religious  feehng  which  the  orthodox 
theologians  of  the  Church  of  England  were  powerless  to  set  free. 

A  revival  of  such  a  type  was  bound  to  produce  varied  results. 
Besides  the  enthusiastic  adoption  of  Methodism  by  the  "hungry 
sheep"  who  were  no  more  fed  by  their  ecclesiastical  shepherds 
than  in  Milton's  time,  there  must  be  noted  its  rejection  by  the 
Adam  Bedes  of  every  walk  in  life,  for  whom  the  long-tried,  firmly 
rooted  habit  of  the  estabhshed  creed  and  ritual  supplied  adequate 
spiritual  nourishment.  To  minister  to  such  devout  or  indifferent 
souls,  a  new  spirit  awoke  among  church  leaders.  Just  as  the 
revolt  of  Luther  caused  a  purification  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  so 
the  schism  of  Wesley  brought  about  an  evangelical  movement  in 
the  Church  of  England  and  among  dissenters  other  than  Metho- 
dists, advocating  a  return  to  what  a  religious  popular  song  of  our 
own  time  has  designated  as  "the  old-time  religion"  of  heaven  and 
hell,  reward  and  punishment,  vicarious  atonement,  conversion, 
and  all  the  paraphernalia  which  deism  had  caused  to  be  discarded. 
But  a  reaction  of  such  sort  in  the  du-ection  of  narrowness  and 
bigotry,  was,  of  course,  totally  without  influence  on  the  mind  of 
the  independent  thinker.  Revulsion  against  the  utter  irrationahty 
of  Methodists  and  Evangelicals  developed  the  rationalistic  church- 
man of  the  eighteenth  century  into  the  Unitarian  of  the  nineteenth. 
Natural  progress  along  the  logically  rational  lines  followed  so 
courageousl}'^  by  Hume  brought  the  deist  to  the  sceptical  position 
occupied  by  Gibbon  and  Paine.     And  reason  now  had  as  her 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  175 

handmaid  the  new  historical  sense,  which  at  every  step  subjected 
the  validity  of  hitherto  unquestioned  scriptural  assertions  to  the 
test  of  the  historical  critical  method. 

Another  element  of  confusion  was  added  to  the  chaos  into  which 
religious  thought  had  been  plunged  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  by  the  culmination  of  the  strife  between  rehgion  and 
science  which  had  existed  ever  since  Rome  forced  the  recantation 
of  Galileo.  Just  as  the  Copernican  theory  had  frightened  mediae- 
val theologians  with  its  removal  of  the  earth  from  the  center  of 
the  universe  and  therefore  of  man  from  his  place  of  chief  importance 
in  the  divine  scheme  of  things,  so  the  discoveries  of  geologists 
and  biologists  frightened  Evangelical  and  churchman  ahke. 
Laplace  presented  the  nebular  theory;  and  what  would  become 
of  the  old  theory  of  the  direct  personal  action  of  God  upon  the 
universe?  Linnaeus,  Smith,  and  Lyell  discovered  fossils  and 
interpreted  strata;  and  what  was  to  become  of  the  six  days  of 
creation  and  of  Noah's  flood?  Treviranus,  Lamarck,  Erasmus, 
Darwin,  and  St.  Hilaire  developed  the  idea  of  evolution;  and 
what  was  to  become  of  the  Fall  of  Man,  and  with  it  of  the  whole 
plan  of  salvation?  Orthodox  theologians  and  believers  in  the 
truths  of  science  were  alike  in  their  failure  to  see  that  the  soundness 
of  Christianity  was  not  endangered  by  the  discarding  of  belief 
in  supernatural  occurrences  or  special  providences.  If  the  events 
of  the  Bible  narrative  did  not  happen  in  the  miraculous,  nay, 
magical  way  in  which  the  Bible  said  they  did,  then  the  whole 
Christian  revelation  was  false,  for  it  must  needs  stand  or  fall  by 
the  truth  of  the  miracles.  So  the  orthodox,  ecclesiastic  and 
layman  alike,  began  assiduously  to  prove  that  the  scientific 
conclusions  were  false,  or,  failing  that,  that  they  harmonized 
point  by  point  with  scripture.  The  honest  thinker,  unable  to 
hoodwink  himself  into  any  distrust  of  scientific  conclusions,  began 
to  wonder  if  the  beliefs  in  creation  and  flood  and  miracle  and 
special  providence  and  anthropomorphic  God  did  not,  as  they 
fell  in  ruin,  carry  with  them  in  one  tremendous  cataclysm  all 
belief  in  an  unseen  and  eternal  reahty.  Honesty  demanded  the 
disclaiming  of  possible  knowledge;  the  agnostic  was  the  man  too 
honest  to  believe  in  the  supernatural,  and  not  wise  enough  to 
see  of  how  little  consequence  the  supernatural  element  was  in  a 
Christianity  rightly  interpreted. 

Less  honest  but  more  wise  was  the  new  type  of  clergyman 


f 


176  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

produced  by  the  controversy  of  orthodoxy  with  science.  The 
latitudinarian,  attempting  to  broaden  the  creed  of  his  church  and 
make  it  sufficiently  elastic  to  stretch  over  the  demands  of  the 
hour,  represented  in  religion  the  spirit  of  compromise  that  in  the 
sphere  of  poUtics  animated  the  early  Reform  Bills.  Firmness  on 
essentials,  elasticity  on  non-essentials  seem  to  have  been  the 
principles  of  a  group  that  might  have  been  called  Uberal  conserva- 
tives. They  saw  that  to  command  the  allegiance  of  thinking 
men  to  the  church  it  was  necessary  to  leave  room  for  individual 
interpretation  of  scripture  and  of  creed.  Abstractly,  the  spirit 
of  compromise  is  despicable  and  cowardly;  practically,  it  is  by 
compromise  methods  that  reforms  have  always  been  effected. 
The  noblest  type  of  character  says  with  Luther,  "Here  I  stand; 
I  cannot  do  otherwise."  But  such  a  declaration  does  not  carry 
its  opponents  with  it.  And  there  is  no  cowardice  or  insincerity 
in  such  an  adaptation  of  the  cardinal  principles  of  the  creed  as 
that  by  which  Arnold  of  Rugby  or  Robertson  of  Brighton  made 
the  creed  possible  of  acceptance  by  intelligent  and  earnest  seekers 
after  truth.  It  was  the  broad  churchmen  of  the  Oriel  school  at 
Oxford  who  first  began  to  see  that  it  was  sin  rather  than  heresy 
that  ailed  the  world,  and  who  made  their  cardinal  principle  an 
absence  of  dogma,  and  a  generous  "sjonpathy  with  what  was 
good  and  earnest  in  all  religious  parties."^ 

The  outstanding  religious  event  during  the  years  when  "In 
Memoriam"  was  growing  was  the  Oxford  Movement.  Its  initia- 
tion was  consequent  upon  the  state  of  religious  confusion  suggested 
by  a  mere  enumeration  of  the  names  appUed  to  religious  groups 
of  the  time.  Sectarians  and  Evangelicals;  high,  low,  and  broad 
church  parties;  Whigs  who  beheved  in  an  Erastian  control  of 
church  by  state,  in  disestablishment,  in  Catholic  emancipation, 
and  Tories  who  clung  to  the  establishment;  Athanasians,  Unita- 
rians, and  agnostics — so  diverse  were  the  classifications  necessary 
to  include  the  varying  views  and  doctrines  which  somewhere 
amidst  the  mists  of  argument  and  speculation  concealed  the 
truth.  Such  a  stormy  sea  of  opinion  offered  no  anchorage  for 
the  orthodox  mind.  Such  a  bewildering  choice  of  views  implied 
the  absence  of  all  authority.  The  Protestant  Reformation, 
three  centuries  before,  had  cut  men  loose  from  the  comfortable 
authority  of  the   infallible   Church  of  Rome.      Now   scientific 

» Wilfred  Ward's  lAfe  of  Newman,  Vol.  I,  p.  37. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  177 

research,  calling  into  question  the  validity  and  inspiration  of  the 
supposedly  infallible  scriptures,  once  more  removed  the  element 
of  authority  and  cut  the  church  loose  from  its  moorings.  The 
salvation  of  the  establishment  depended  upon  the  substitution 
of  some  other  authority  in  religion  for  that  of  the  creed  and  the 
Bible,  now  being  called  into  question  and  Hkely  soon  to  be  aban- 
doned by  all  but  the  blindly  orthodox.  Such  an  incentive,  as  well 
as  the  wish  to  revivify  the  dry  bones  of  formal  religion,  animated 
the  leaders  of  the  Tractarian  party,  which  sought  to  establish 
the  antiquity  and  consequent  authority  of  the  Anglican  Catholic 
Church.  But  a  movement  aimed  to  make  "relentless  war  against 
the  '  Liberalism '  in  thought  that  was  breaking  up  ancient  institu- 
tions in  Church  and  State,  and  would  not  cease  from  its  work 
until  it  had  destroyed  religion,"^  as  the  Tractarians  thought, 
issued  actually  in  causing  an  irreconcilable  split  between  the 
moderate  Tractarians,  like  Pusey  and  Keble,  the  Romanistic 
Tractarians  Uke  Newman,  and  the  officials  of  the  established 
church.  The  sincere  souls  who  set  out  to  save  religion  in  England 
"by  strengthening  the  English  Church  as  the  home  of  dogmatic 
religion;  by  imparting  intellectual  depth  to  its  traditional  theology 
and  spiritual  life  to  its  institutions ;  by  strengthening  and  renewing 
the  almost  broken  links  which  bound  the  Church  of  England  to 
the  Church  Catholic  of  the  great  ages,"^  found  themselves  plunged, 
not  into  a  work  of  reform  and  purification,  but  into  a  passionate 
controversy. 

Religious  confusion,  then,  growing  out  of  an  ardent  religious 
emotion,  out  of  a  sincere  devotion  to  tradition  and  authority, 
and  out  of  an  equally  sincere  passion  for  intellectual  and  spiritual 
truth,  was  one  of  the  characteristic  elements  of  thought  in  the 
age  of  Tennyson.  The  other  dominant  quality  was  something 
newer  than  controversy,  newer  than  dogma,  newer  even  than 
science,  so  far  as  its  penetration  into  the  Ufe  of  men  was  concerned; 
yet  as  old  as  the  God  who  is  love.  For  love,  not  creed,  was  the 
keynote  of  the  new  religion  that  gradually  developed  as  the 
nineteenth  century  matured.  Called  by  a  longer  name,  it  was 
the  spirit  of  humanitarianism,  of  brotherhood  and  service,  that 
began  in  the  work  for  social  reform  of  the  radical  utilitarians,  and 
emerged  into  the  Christian  socialism  of  Maurice,  Kingsley,  and 
Denison.      Evangelicals  joined  with   philosophical  radicals  and 

>/&i<i.,  p.  4.  » Ibid.,  p.  5. 


178  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

philanthropic  hberals^  in  reforms  that  had  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  orthodoxy  or  heresy — aboUtion  of  slavery,  prison  reform, 
modification  of  the  barbarous  penal  code,  legislation  for  the 
protection  of  women  and  children  in  mines  and  factories.  Just 
as  in  the  midst  of  primeval  chaos  the  spirit  of  God  "moved  upon 
the  face  of  the  waters,"  so  the  solvent  for  the  chaos  of  creeds  and 
refusals  of  creeds  was  the  spirit  of  practical  love. 

If  Tennyson,  Hke  his  fellow  poet-philosophers,  reflects  the 
religion  of  his  time,  he  will  reveal  these  two  elements — a  confusion 
of  thought,  in  which  now  one,  now  another  current  of  opinion  or 
emotion  will  be  dominant;  and  a  breadth  of  sympathy  akin  to 
the  spirit  that  animated  the  philanthropists  and  social  reformers. 
Not  seldom  a  writer's  estimate  of  his  own  work  is  the  fairest; 
and  Tennyson's  final  comment  on  his  elegy,  at  the  end  of  the 
prologue — 

"these  wild  and  wandering  cries, 
Confusions  of  a  wasted  youth" — 

prepares  the  way  for  an  atmosphere  of  unrest  and  uncertainty 
which  all  the  early  part  of  the  poem  verifies.  As  the  categorical 
imperative  of  Kant  is  reflected  in  "In  Memoriam"  not  by  echo 
or  paraphrase  but  implicitly,  by  application  as  a  method  to  the 
solving  of  problems;  so  the  confusion  of  the  mind  of  Tennyson's 
age  is  implicitly  reflected  in  the  evident  lack  of  assurance  in 
opinion  of  the  writer  as  he  struggles  through  from  doubt  to  faith. 
No  one  of  the  religious  attitudes  of  the  time  is  here  maintained 
consistently.  In  passages  which  bear  upon  the  Biblical  narrative 
or  upon  accepted  doctrine,  there  are  apparent  the  results  of 
orthodox  evangelical  teaching,  the  influence  surrounding  the 
poet's  early  years,  and  congenial  to  the  native  conservatism  of 
his  mind.  The  God  in  whom  foreknowledge  dwells,  with  whom  a 
thousand  years  is  as  a  day,  is  described  in  the  reference  to 

"that  eye  which  watches  guilt 
And  goodness,  and  hath  power  to  see 
Within  the  green  the  moulder'd  tree. 
And  towers  fallen  as  soon  as  built."- 
To  this  apparent  belief  in  the  foreknowledge  of  God  is  added  a 
hint  of  a  Calvinistic  adherence  to  predestination : 

"I  curse  not  Nature,  no,  nor  Death; 
For  nothing  is  that  errs  from  law."^ 

'  Morley's  Ldfe  of  Gladstone,  Vol.  I,  pp.  156,  163.     =  Ibid.,  Canto  LXXIII. 
*  In  Memoriam,  Canto  XXVI. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  179 

More  than  a  hint  of  a  lingering  belief  in  special  providences  is 
contained  in  the  lines 

"in  Vienna's  fatal  walls 
God's  finger  touched  him,  and  he  slept."' 

No  more  beautiful  interpretation  of  the  heart  of  Christmas  could 
be  given  than  Tennyson's  greeting  to  the  dawn  of  the  first  Yuletide 
of  the  cycle: 

"Rise,  happy  morn,  rise,  holy  morn, 

Draw  forth  the  cheerful  day  from  night: 
O  Father,  touch  the  east,  and  light 

The  light  that  shone  when  Hope  was  born."^ 

The  two  poems^  which  record  the  story  of  the  raising  of  Lazarus 
and  of  Mary's  grateful  offering  of  devotion  are  redolent  of  the 
faiths  of  childhood.  What  the  EvangeUcals  called  "saving 
faith"  in  Christ  as  the  Way  leading  to  life  speaks  in  the  end  of  the 
imaginary  picture  of  what  Tennyson's  life  would  have  been  had 
Hallam  lived — 

"And  He  that  died  in  Holy  Land 
Would  reach  us  out  the  shining  hand. 
And  take  us  as  a  single  soul."^ 

The  sacred  faiths  of  childhood  weave  themselves  thus  into  the 
fabric  of  thought.  However  far  the  progress  of  the  mature 
mind  may  proceed,  outgrown  habits  of  belief  are  inescapable. 
Yet  the  same  writer  whose  references  to  Holy  Writ  are  as  ingenuous 
as  might  be  those  of  the  blue-eyed  sister  who  told  him  doubt  was 
devil-born  shows  in  other  places  an  equal  hatred  of  tradition 
accepted  merely  because  traditional.     Use  and  Wont, 

"Old  sisters  of  a  day  gone  by, 

Gray  nurses,  loving  nothing  new,"* 

are  treated  with  tolerance  only  so  long  as  in  them  remains  alive 
the  spirit  of  a  beloved  past.  When  that  memory  dies,  ceremony 
becomes  empty  and  futile, 

"For  who  would  keep  an  ancient  form 
Thro'  which  the  spirit  breathes  no  more?"^ 

It  is  almost  fanciful  to  suppose  that  in  the  implied  attitude  to 
tradition  in  creed  and  in  form  lies  any  disclosure  of  Tennyson's 

1  Ibid.,  Canto  LXXXV.  *  Ibid.,  Canto  LXXXIV. 

2  Ibid.,  Canto  XXX.  » Ibid.,  Canto  XXIX. 
» Ibid.,  Cantos  XXXI-XXXII.  « Ibid.,  Canto  CV. 


180  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

feeling  toward  the  Oxford  Movement,  about  which  he  must  have 
had  an  opinion.    But  except  for  the  single  line, 

"To  cleave  a  creed  in  sects  and  cries, "^ 

there  is  no  other  hint  of  his  view  upon  a  subject  which  no  religiously 
minded  person  in  the  thirties  and  forties  could  avoid  thinking 
about. 

In  contrast  with  the  orthodox  habit  of  mind  evident  in  such 
allusions  as  those  just  quoted,  are  the  passages  which  express  the 
latitudinarian  viewpoint.  To  this  Tennyson,  creed  is  relatively 
unimportant,  as  he  thinks,  shut  in  his  sorrow,  of 

"The  Shadow  cloak'd  from  head  to  foot," 
"Who  keeps  the  keys  of  all  the  creeds, "^ 

and  realizes  that  death  is  the  great  leveller,  not  only  of  rich  and 
poor,  but  of  Dissenter,  Anglican,  and  Romanist.  The  toleration 
which  he  asks  from  the  man 

"Whose  faith  has  center  everywhere" 

for  the  sister  who  still  clings  to  her  early  heaven,  and  to  her 
faith  made  real  through  form,  impUes  a  greater  sympathy  with 
the  soul 

"that  after  toil  and  storm 
Mayst  seem  to  have  reach'd  a  purer  air."^ 

It  is  this  Tennyson  who  presents  a  view  of  a  humanized  Christ 
far  broader  and  more  beautiful  than  that  of  the  orthodox  creed — 
the  man  who  made  current  coin  of  the  truths  of  the  spirit,  who 
wrought 

"With  human  hands  the  creed  of  creeds 
In  loveliness  of  perfect  deeds. "^ 

It  is  this  Tennyson  who  dares,  in  a  day  when  acceptance  of  the 
deity  of  Jesus  was  a  test  question  in  religion,  to  run  the  risk  of  a 
charge  of  infidelity  by  the  declaration, 

"Thou  seemest  human  and  divine, 

The  highest,  holiest  manhood,  thou."^ 

How  like  these  expressions  of  breadth  and  tolerance  are  to  the 
elastic  views  of  the  broadest  and  most  generous  churchmen  of  the 

^  Ibid.,  Canto  CXXVIII.  ■•  Ibid.,  Canto  XXXVI. 

2  Ibid.,  Canto  XXIII.  *  Ibid.,  Prologue. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  XXXIII. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  181 

period  may  be  seen  in  a  mere  glance  at  the  teaching  of  Frederick 
Robertson.  "Alas!"  he  wrote  in  1852,  "when  I  see  Romanists 
cursing  the  Church  of  England,  Evangelicals  shaking  their  heads 
about  the  Christianity  of  Tractarians,  Tractarians  banning 
Dissenters,  Dissenters  anathematizing  Unitarians,  and  Unitarians 
of  the  old  school  condemning  the  more  spiritual  ones  of  the  new; 
I  am  forced  to  hope  that  there  is  more  inclusiveness  in  the  Love 
of  God  than  in  the  bitter  orthodoxy  of  sects  and  churches."^ 
Later,  establishing  his  argument  for  the  divinity  of  Christ,  he 
proceeded  in  words  that  read  like  a  commentary  on  Tennyson's 
prologue:  "Christ  claims  sonship  in  virtue  of  His  Humanity.  .  .  . 
Begin  with  Him  as  God's  character  revealed  under  the  limitations 
of  humanity.  "2 

As  there  was  an  evangelical  Tennyson  and  a  latitudinarian 
Tennyson,  so,  temporarily,  there  was  an  agnostic  Tennyson. 
For  him  agnosticism  grew  out  of  the  effort  to  prove  the  great 
realities.     He  sought  God,  but 

"found  Him  not  in  world  or  sun, 
Or  eagle's  wing,  or  insect's  eye, 
Nor  thro'  the  questions  men  may  try. 
The  petty  cobwebs  we  have  spun."^ 

He  tried  to  prove  immortality,  but  progressed  no  farther  than  the 
persuasion  that  life  must  continue,  since  otherwise  all  life  must  be 
futile.*  His  discussion  of  immortality  concerns  itself  largely 
with  the  attempt  to  determine  what  sort  of  life  the  continuing 
life  will  be,  seeking  to  provide  proofs  of  all  the  hopes  that  his 
love  for  his  friend  makes  him  desire  assurance  of.  The  life  after 
death  is  to  be  marked  by  a  continuance  of  activity 

"In  those  great  offices  that  suit 
The  full-grown  energies  of  heaven."^ 

Earthly  affection  must  continue: 

"Love  will  last  as  pure  and  whole 

As  when  he  loved  me  here  in  Time."^ 

Memory  is  to  persist,'  and  personality,^  otherwise  a  belief  in  the 
continuance  of  life  is  utterly  without  consolation.     But  all  these 

'  Stopford  Brooke's  Life  o/  Robertson,  p.  267.  *  Ibid.,  Canto  XL. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  279.  •  Ibid.,  Canto  XLIII. 

3  In  Memoriam,  Canto  CXXIV.  '  Ibid.,  Cantos  XLV-VI. 
*  Ihid.,  Cantos  XXXIV,  LVI.  ^  ji^id,^  Canto  XLVII. 


182  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

are  assumptions,  based  on  the  "will  to  believe" ;  nothing  is  proved. 
Assurance  of  God  came  to  Tennyson  through  the  medium  of 
feeling: 

"Then  was  I  as  a  child  that  cries, 
But,  crying,  knows  his  father  near ; 

And  what  I  am  beheld  again 

What  is,  and  no  man  understands; 

And  out  of  darkness  came  the  hands 
That  reach  thro'  nature,  moulding  men."^ 

Assurance  of  immortaUty,  too,  came  in  a  flash  of  intuition,  in  his 
midnight  vision  on  the  lawn,  when  the  contagion  of  Hallam's 
own  remembered  faith  and  vigor  came  to  touch  him  from  the  past, 

"And  all  at  once  it  seem'd  at  last 
The  living  soul  was  flash'd  on  mine."^ 

The  spirit  that  cries  out, 

"Behold,  we  know  not  anything";' 

the  spirit  that  is  like  the  "infant  crying  for  the  Ught";  the  spirit 
that  can  only  falter  on  the  stairs  of  God;  the  spirit  which 
recognized  the  faith  in  honest  doubt — this  is  typically  the  spirit 
of  the  agnostic.  "Nothing  worthy  proving  can  be  proven,"  says 
the  Ancient  Sage. 

But  Tennj'^son  did  not  remain  agnostic.  And  the  solution  at 
which  he  arrived  in  his  attempt  to  prove  the  reaUties  in  which  he 
longed  to  beUeve,  the  solution  of  an  intuitive  conviction  called 
faith,  was  not  characteristic  of  his  time.  His  was  the  faith  of  the 
mystic;  and  though  he  reached  it  bj-"  the  nineteenth  century  road 
of  doubt,  the  mystic's  faith  is  not  a  nineteenth  century  growth. 
The  mystic  in  every  age  is  he  who  grasps  truth  through  intuition, 
who  has  eyes  to  perceive  the  invisible.  For  him  there  is  no 
Unknowable.  Such  a  spirit  belongs  to  no  century;  it  is  a  bond 
that  links  together  across  the  ages  the  young  men  who  see  visions 
and  the  old  men  who  dream  dreams.  The  poet  who  waited  for 
the  "beam  in  darkness,"  who  Hstened  for  the  vaster  music,  was 
not  so  far  removed  in  spiritual  kinship  from  the  mediaeval  saint* 
who  wrote,  "Blessed  are  the  ears  that  gladly  receive  the  pulses 
of  the  Divine  whisper  .  .  .  which  Usten  not  after  the  voice  which 

I  Ihid.,  Canto  CXXIV.  '  Ibid.,  Canto  LIV. 

« Ibid.,  Canto  XCV.  *  Thomas  k  Kempis. 


The  Poet  as  Philosopher  183 

is  sounding  without,  but  for  the  Truth  teaching  within.  Blessed 
are  the  eyes  which  are  shut  to  outward  things,  but  intent  on 
things  within." 

Perhaps  it  was  because  his  mind  was  so  intent  on  things  within 
that  Tennyson  reflects  so  comparatively  little  of  the  human- 
itarian movement  of  his  time.  There  is  a  hint  of  awareness  of  it 
in  the  complaint, 

"So  many  worlds,  so  much  to  do, 
So  little  done,  such  things  to  be";^ 

there  is  a  suggestion  of  consciousness  of  the  social  upheaval  of 
the  years  from  1830  to  1850  in  the  declaration  that  "social  truth 
shall  spread,"  in  spite  of  the  "red  fool-fury  of  the  Seine,"  and  in 
spite  of  the  toppling  of  king  and  beggar,  the  pillars  that  sustain 
the  two  ends  of  the  social  system.^  But  the  only  passage  at  all 
typical  of  such  dawning  social  sympathy  as  lay  at  the  basis  of 
the  work  of  Kingsley  is  the  famous  poem  which  rings  out  the  old 
year  and  with  it  old  falsities  and  feuds,  old  political  strifes,  old 
poverty  and  pride,  old  greed  and  coldness,  old  disease,  darkness, 
and  war.3  Most  of  the  time  Tennyson's  personal  grief  and 
personal  problems  loomed  too  large  to  allow  him  to  see  the  greater 
griefs,  the  farther-reaching  problems  of  humanity. 

There  is  a  similarity  between  the  relation  of  each  of  these  three 
poet-philosophers  to  his  age  as  an  artist,  and  his  relation  as  a 
religionist.  The  preceding  chapter  reached  the  conclusion  that, 
while  in  the  artistic  qualities  common  to  all  poets  of  the  period 
each  reflected  the  art  development  of  his  epoch,  nevertheless  in 
his  own  peculiarly  individual  poetic  qualities,  each  poet  was 
himself  and  no  mere  reflection.  So  in  the  present  instance,  as 
far  as  religious  opinion  went,  each  was  the  echo  of  the  theological 
leaders  of  his  time.  But  in  personal  reaction  to  religion,  each 
poet  was  essentially  individual.  Davies,  in  religion  as  in  life 
and  art,  combined  the  ingenuous  temper  of  the  child  with  the 
judicial  and  logical  mind  of  the  lawyer.  Pope,  in  religion  as  in 
Hfe  and  art,  was  the  brilliant  and  self-conscious  rhetorician, 
arguing  without  conviction  of  his  own  upon  a  theme  of  indifferent 
interest  to  him,  but  which  gave  him  opportunity  for  the  exercise 

» In  Memariam,  Canto  LXXIII.  '  Ibid.,  Canto  CVI. 

» Ibid.,  Canto  CXXVII. 


184  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

of  his  gift  of  epigram.  Tennyson,  in  religion  as  in  life  and  art, 
looked  upon  the  universe  with  the  eyes  of  the  romanticist  and  the 
mystic.  He  was  much  less  the  mirror  of  his  time  and  much  more 
the  individual  than  are  the  others,  because  while  Davies  and  Pope, 
turned  philosophers  for  a  time,  were  presenting  systematized 
philosophies  of  religion,  Tennyson  was  merely  giving  expression 
to  the  religious  struggles  and  convictions  of  one  who  was  at 
moments  a  philosopher,  but  who  was  always  a  poet.  In  other 
words,  in  so  far  as  any  expression  becomes  a  revelation  of  person- 
ality, it  ceases  to  be  only  a  mirror  of  its  time.     . 


VII 

All  that  remains  necessary  to  complete  this  discussion  of  the 
poet-philosophers  is  a  summary  of  the  respects  in  which  they 
have  been  found  to  reflect  their  periods.  With  due  allowance 
made  for  the  personal  equation,  by  which  the  poet's  own  indi- 
viduality, as  man  or  as  artist,  surmounts  the  controlling  influences 
of  his  time,  the  conclusion  seems  fair  that  when  the  poet  enters 
the  realm  of  metaphysics  he  becomes  a  mouthpiece  of  other 
men's  thought.  His  art  is  his  own;  his  feeling  is  his  own;  his 
interpretation  and  application  of  the  system  with  which  he  deals 
may  be  his  own;  but  he  is  not,  in  the  region  of  metaphysical 
abstractions,  an  independent  or  original  thinker.  It  is  hardly 
safe  to  generalize  from  three  instances;  but  so  far  as  Daviee, 
Pope,  and  Tennyson  are  concerned,  there  seems  no  doubt  as  to 
the  generalization. 

All  three  reflect  the  background  of  history  and  social  condition 
against  which  they  appear.  All  three  echo  the  philosophical 
systems  of  the  periods  immediately  preceding  their  own.  All 
three  show  themselves  products  of  the  educational  development 
that  shaped  their  growth,  Davies  of  humanism  in  particular, 
Pope  of  naturalism,  and  Tennyson  of  modern  scientific  study. 
Each  stands  at  the  close  of  a  movement  in  art,  and  therefore 
concentrates  in  himself  the  art  qualities  of  the  poets  preceding 
him.  All  three  in  their  rehgious  proclivities  exempUfy  with 
paramount  force  the  religious  procUvities  of  their  contemporaries, 
If  the  discussion  concerned  Davies  as  a  eulogist  of  Queen  EHzabeth. 
Pope  as  a  social  satirist,  or  Tennyson  as  a  writer  of  idyllic  narrative 
or  musical  lyric,  the  verdict  would  be  different,  for  in  these  fields 
the  poets  breathed  their  own  element  and  were  essentially  them- 
selves, beholden  for  ideas  to  none.  But  as  philosophers  their 
merit  lies,  not  in  originality  or  independence,  but  in  the  charm 
or  vigor  of  expression  with  which  they  present  the  thoughts  that 
they  have  not  invented  as  new  creations  but  have  discovered  as 
already  in  existence. 

Pondering  upon  these  poet-philosophers  who  have  interpreted 
for  the  lover  of  literature  the  thought  of  their  time;  observing 
how  they  become  progressively  less  positive  in  thought,  less 
convinced,  less  dogmatic,  one  can  but  speculate  on  the  influences 

185 


186  The  Poet  as  Philosopher 

that  will  be  reflected  when  the  poet-philosopher  arises  to  interpret 
the  twentieth  century.  His  will  be  the  voice  of  a  world  in  chaos, 
of  an  archaic  social  system  tottering  to  its  fall,  of  an  industrial 
strife  which  more  and  more  robs  hfe  of  all  ideals  except  utility 
and  gain.  It  may  be  the  voice  of  an  international  state,  united 
for  ideals  of  peace;  or  of  a  persistent  international  rivalry  issuing 
in  such  warfare  as  shames  the  carnage  of  the  jungle  by  its  savage- 
ness.  His  may  be  the  voice  of  a  generation,  as  yet  hypothetical, 
that  understands  the  theory  of  relativity.  He  may,  for  the  better 
fortune  of  art,  be  spokesman  for  the  end  of  an  epoch  of  futurism 
in  music,  painting,  and  poetry.  He  must,  if  religion  is  yet  to 
live,  give  expression  to  an  ideal  of  human  love  and  service  as 
the  pathway  to  the  apprehension  of  God.  He  may — who  knows? 
— arrive  at  such  a  contact  with  the  unseen  world  as  to  prove  that 
immortality  which  all  the  thinkers  in  all  the  ages  have  sought  to 
prove.     And  then — 

Will  he  have  arrived  at  any  truer  comprehension  of  man's 
relation  to  the  infinite  than  did  Davies  in  his  prayer  for  inspiration? 

"O  Light  that  mak'st  the  light,  which  makes  the  day! 
Which  setst  the  eye  without,  and  mind  within; 
'Lighten  my  spirit  with  one  cleare  heavenly  ray." 

Will  he  have  reached  any  higher  conception  of  the  whole  duty 
of  man  than  did  Pope? 

"Slave  to  no  sect,  who  takes  no  private  road, 
But  looks  through  nature  up  to  nature's  God; 
Pursues  that  chain  which  links  th'  immense  design. 
Joins  heav'n  and  earth,  and  mortal  and  divine; 
Learns  from  this  union  of  the  rising  whole, 
The  first,  last  purpose  of  the  human  soul; 

"And  knows  where  faith,  law,  morals,  all  began, 
All  end — in  love  of  God  and  love  of  man." 

And  will  he  have  attained  any  fuller  knowledge  of  "the  breadth, 
and  length,  and  depth,  and  height"  than  was  Tennyson's? 

^Our  Uttle  systems  have  their  day, 
2.y  \      They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be; 
^  t'^    A      They  are  but  broken  Ughts  of  Thee, 

And  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 

For  the  discovery  arrived  at  by  every  sincere  thinker  in  every 
age  is  one — the  Uttleness  of  man  in  the  infinite  spaces  of  eternity. 


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The  Poet  as  Philosopher  189 

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